This topic was discussed with LSB maintainers on #683654. Maybe these two bugs should be merged, but I don't know if the discussion will be preserved. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=683654 2013/6/1 Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>: > The attached git patch makes the log_* functions in > /lib/lsb/init-functions check $VERBOSE before outputting anything. > > - Josh Triplett