printing boot probe messages

[Dag-Erling Smørgrav]

Chuck Robey <chuckr at chuckr.org> writes:
> I'm sorry, Dag, but I am myself having problem describing it.  I have been
> asking for names, but while I get some guesses about the loss of printing,
> they haven't given me names to use.  I see two items that I can get, when
> booting.  If I stick "-v" in /boot.config, then when the kernel probes, all
> the probes are verbose.  Stuff like my HDaudio card print incredibly
> verbose listings.  OK, that's what I will call here Print#1
>
> The other thing is what I can see if I see the ascii-graphical loader (the
> picture, in ascii-graphics, either of a BSDaemon, or of the letters
> "FreeBSD", and a list of about 9 options for booting.  If I select item #5,
> then I get a listing.  The listing is quite distinct from what I identify
> as Print#1, so I'll call this Print#2.

Actually, -v in /boot.config and item 5 in the beastie menu ("Boot
FreeBSD with verbose logging" have *exactly* the same effect.  Both set
the boot_verbose loader variable, which in turn causes the kernel
variable bootverbose (no underscore) to be set to 1.

> If I either hit return at that
> ascii booting menu (to get the default) or select item #1, then when it
> boots, I get no print at all: I see the very first spinner character (but
> it never prints the second one), and the next thing I see, it's printing
> "Login:".  This Print#2 looks like the old non-verbose booting messages
> that I used to see, before I lost the printing of all booting messages.

We've already covered the reason why you "lost the printing of all
booting messages".  Please fix it before asking another boot-related
question.

> I'm beginning, right now, to wonder: I increased the dmesg-buffer to 64K, I
> wonder if maybe that might possibly cause the bug?

No.

> I know it shouldn't,
> but it wouldn't be the first time this week that I found weird behaviour in
> the kernel: if you set the number of vtys from the default 16 down to 8,
> that caused me to lose keyboard input to my X11.

Of course you did.  You removed the vty device that is assigned to X11
in /etc/ttys, so it has no way of getting keyboard input with the
standard keyboard driver.  If you absolutely must have only 8 vtys in
your system, simply edit /etc/ttys so X11 will run on a lower-numbered
vty; but there is really *no reason at all* to change the number of vtys
on a normal computer.

DES
-- 
Dag-Erling Smørgrav - des at des.no