Re: My Wishlist and strategic thinking for v2.4

["Matthew D. Pitts" <mpitts@suite224.net>]

----------
> From: Thomas Womack <thomas.womack@merton.oxford.ac.uk>
> To: linux-future@nl.linux.org
> Subject: Re: My Wishlist and strategic thinking for v2.4
> Date: Friday, January 29, 1999 11:48 AM
> 
> >If something terrible happens, we print a message. We'd think the
> >user is a moron if the kernel said "root fs has no superblock"
> >and they ignored it. Because of this, the user feels that they
> >are being forced to understand all the strange messages.
> >
> >Also, messages are normally printed when something bad happens.
> >Users to not expect "I'm not dead yet!" messages. They expect
> >a progress indicator instead, When the user sees a message that
> >they don't understand, they (reasonably) assume it is an error.
Some more than others, of course. I don't understand a lot of the messages
that scroll by, but they don't scare me, unless I've done something stupid.
 
> I've just had a look through /var/log/dmesg, and I can't see a message
that's
> really worth displaying (of course, this is a well-configured PC).
> 
> Isn't the correct solution to have a configure option
CONF_LONG_BOOTUP_MESSAGES,
> and a LILO option 'verbose'; if the machine hangs on bootup, tech support
tells
> the user to reboot and type 'verbose' at the LILO prompt, and then has
the
> messages to work from?
Um, not everyone uses/can use LILO. Presently, I have to use UMSDOS as my
root fs (don't ask why, please) and LILO don't work with it. But, yes that
"could" be a useful option.

Matthew D. Pitts
mpitts@suite224.net
-
Linux-future: thinking about the future of the Linux kernel
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