Re: [patch] printk from userspace

[Linus Torvalds]

On Wed, 14 Aug 2002, Alexander Viro wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, 14 Aug 2002, Benjamin LaHaise wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, Aug 13, 2002 at 09:11:55PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > > It requires root.
> > 
> > Still, unlike kernel code that can be rate limited, this call cannot.  
> > Besides, isn't adding yet another syscall that's equivalent to write(2) 
> > a reason to take this patch and burn it along with the vomit its caused?
> 
> I have a better suggestion.  How about we make write(2) on /dev/console to
> act as printk()?  IOW, how about making _all_ writes to console show up in
> dmesg?
> 
> Then we don't need anything special to do logging _and_ we get output
> of init scripts captured.  For free.  dmesg(8) would pick that up, klogd(8)
> will work as is, etc.
> 
> Linus?

Well, apart from the fact that you get into an endless loop with klogd, 
who wants to spew the kernel messages back to the console under some 
circumstances..

That said, I like the notion. I've always hated the fact that all the 
boot-time messages get lost, simply because syslogd hadn't started, and 
as a result things like fsck ran without any sign afterwards. The kernel 
log approach saves it all in one place.

But /dev/console just sounds potentially _too_ noisy.

		Linus