From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261296AbTDKRZy (for ); Fri, 11 Apr 2003 13:25:54 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261246AbTDKRZv (for ); Fri, 11 Apr 2003 13:25:51 -0400 Received: from chaos.analogic.com ([204.178.40.224]:14984 "EHLO chaos.analogic.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261296AbTDKRZp (for ); Fri, 11 Apr 2003 13:25:45 -0400 Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 13:38:03 -0400 (EDT) From: "Richard B. Johnson" X-X-Sender: root@chaos Reply-To: root@chaos.analogic.com To: Chuck Ebbert <76306.1226@compuserve.com> cc: Alan Cox , linux-kernel Subject: RE: kernel support for non-English user messages In-Reply-To: <200304111259_MC3-1-3405-E080@compuserve.com> Message-ID: References: <200304111259_MC3-1-3405-E080@compuserve.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Fri, 11 Apr 2003, Chuck Ebbert wrote: > Alan Cox wrote: > > > > You are right about needing to log parameters, but given a log line > > of the form > > > > %s: went up in flames\n\0eth0\0\0 > > > > that can be handled by the log viewer > > > I still see some problems... > > For one, there are 131 instances of: > > printk("%s\n", blurb); [SNIPPED....] There are 48,038 printk statements in linux-2.4.20. The text portion of those statements comprises 307,136 bytes, excluding modules! This print-your-way code has more ASCII than MBASIC. It is patently absurd and some people are trying to legitimize this text bloat with a translation utility. Fork the kernel and make it text-based if you want, but we need to remove most of this text on the standard kernel, not make it somehow seem right. It is wrong, just plain wrong, and it's getting worse as time goes on. Every one of those printk-drivers should have an ioctl() so that some user-mode program can check on its health, how many SCSI disks got found, what the Ethernet parameters are, etc. This is not something that should be printed on the screen every time the machine boots for the one-time-out-of-1000 that a disk didn't come on-line or the network didn't come up. Most all of the error reporting within the kernel is being done without regard to what used to be called "good standards of engineering practice". BSD also has this problem but you would expect that from students because they become amazed as their driver starts to work and they proudly print every intermediate step in the initialization. Professionals should know better and do better work. Properly running software is indistinguishable from magic and it is completely invisible to the user. Cheers, Dick Johnson Penguin : Linux version 2.4.20 on an i686 machine (797.90 BogoMips). Why is the government concerned about the lunatic fringe? Think about it.