A sort of plan for consoles in FreeBSD

[Andrew Gallatin]

Poul-Henning Kamp [phk at phk.freebsd.dk] wrote:
> I would like to redefine the semantics of "/dev/console" as follows:
> 
> 	if any console-consumers like xconsole(8) are active
> 		send output to all console-consumers.
> 	else if a controlling terminal is available
> 		send output to controlling terminal (that is /dev/tty)
> 	else
> 		send output to syslogd, as if generated by printf(9).
> 		(but do not actually output to low-level console)

If there is nobody logged in, where do kernel messages from device
drivers, and panic messages (with helpful things like KDB_TRACE) wind
up?  I hope the answer is not "nowhere".  I have debugged many
problems after they happened by looking at serial console logs,
and I would hate to loose this.

Drew