Re: Modified start-stop-daemon and possible boot logo (was: Translation of init scripts)
On Wed, 14 Jul 1999, David Bristel wrote:
> I agree, the idea of cute little graphics showing up next to the
> start/stop of a package makes me ill just thinking about it. Even the
> Redhat 6.0 way with it's green "OK" or red "Failed" made me ill because
> it supressed the errors when something failed. Sure, it LOOKS nice for
> the enduser, but the boot sequence is where you NEED to see what's going
> on if you need to troubleshoot a problem on boot.
On a standard system, you'll have linuxlogo to clear the screen right
after those errors are displayed. Right after that, {k,w,x}dm will start
X, which will clear the scrollback buffer. Once X is started, the error
messages are gone for ever.
Oh, and halfway through the boot process there is svgatextmode, resizing
the screen on many systems, which also clears the scrollback buffer. Any
errors displayed by the scripts that run just before svgatextmode are
very hard to catch already.
What good are the error messages if you can't see them anyway? Don't get
me wrong, I'm not saying the error messages should be replaced by a red
"Failed". But Joe Average User already can't get a good look at them.
Perhaps errors at boot time should be logged to the kernel log, so that
'dmesg | less' will show them. Is that possible? Otherwise, they could be
redirected to a file. Even without all the fancy boot logo stuff, I think
this would be a useful addition to the boot process.
And shouldn't the whole thing be implemented in text mode, too?
Remco
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