Hide boot on-screen errors, or get TV-out working on ATI Radeon X300

Sat Dec 6 23:59:33 UTC 2014

This started out as a quest to get rid of inelegant and troubling 
on-screen messages appearing during boot before the Plymouth splash.  I 
have seen this on some number of PC's over time.

Initially I thought that the problem was a sort of leakage of 
ordinarily-hidden screen messages, perhaps caused by a less-than-smooth 
handoff between bootup components.

I imagined that I might find an option to hide screen messages 
altogether, while leaving them to be recorded in the logs.

Then I noted that "quiet" is already included in the default grub 
command-line configuration.  So I wondered if "quiet" was not working.

But then I found an old document at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QuietenGrub 
that proposes in the definition for quiet:

    /The messages that are not error or warning messages should be
    hidden by default. Special care must be taken to not remove messages
    that help identify problems in the boot sequence/.

So I concluded that quiet was working as designed, and that my on-screen 
messages must fall into the category of errors/warnings.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The messages are like, or are some subset of, these excerpts from 
/var/log/kern.log:

Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   10.396312] dcdbas dcdbas: Dell 
Systems Management Base Driver (version 5.6.0-3.2)
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   10.435312] ivtv: Start 
initialization, version 1.4.3
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   10.435398] ivtv0: Initializing 
card 0
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   10.435405] ivtv0: Unknown card: 
vendor/device: [4444:0016]
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   10.435998] ivtv0:               
subsystem vendor/device: [1002:fffb]
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   10.436707] ivtv0:               
cx23416 based
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   10.437174] ivtv0: Defaulting to 
Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150 card
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   10.437777] ivtv0: Please mail 
the vendor/device and subsystem vendor/device IDs and what kind of
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   10.438710] ivtv0: card you have 
to the ivtv-devel mailinglist (www.ivtvdriver.org)
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   10.439514] ivtv0: Prefix your 
subject line with [UNKNOWN IVTV CARD].
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   10.465010] tveeprom 0-0050: 
Huh, no eeprom present (err=-6)?
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   10.465018] tveeprom 0-0050: 
Encountered bad packet header [01]. Corrupt or not a Hauppauge eeprom.
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   10.465020] ivtv0: Invalid EEPROM

Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   12.047525] wm8775 0-001b: chip 
found @ 0x36 (ivtv i2c driver #0)
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   12.050818] wm8775 0-001b: I2C: 
cannot write 000 to register R23
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   12.053958] wm8775 0-001b: I2C: 
cannot write 000 to register R7
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   12.057324] wm8775 0-001b: I2C: 
cannot write 021 to register R11
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   12.060463] wm8775 0-001b: I2C: 
cannot write 102 to register R12
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   12.063582] wm8775 0-001b: I2C: 
cannot write 000 to register R13
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   12.067825] wm8775 0-001b: I2C: 
cannot write 1d4 to register R14
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   12.070980] wm8775 0-001b: I2C: 
cannot write 1d4 to register R15
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   12.074115] wm8775 0-001b: I2C: 
cannot write 1bf to register R16
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   12.092657] wm8775 0-001b: I2C: 
cannot write 185 to register R17
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   12.099257] wm8775 0-001b: I2C: 
cannot write 0a2 to register R18
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   12.102421] wm8775 0-001b: I2C: 
cannot write 005 to register R19
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   12.105560] wm8775 0-001b: I2C: 
cannot write 07a to register R20
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   12.113635] wm8775 0-001b: I2C: 
cannot write 102 to register R21
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   12.123154] ivtv0: Registered 
device video0 for encoder MPG (4096 kB)
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   12.123311] ivtv0: Registered 
device video32 for encoder YUV (2048 kB)
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   12.123456] ivtv0: Registered 
device vbi0 for encoder VBI (1024 kB)
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   12.123594] ivtv0: Registered 
device video24 for encoder PCM (320 kB)
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   12.123725] ivtv0: Registered 
device radio0 for encoder radio
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   12.123730] ivtv0: Initialized 
card: Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   12.123843] ivtv: End initialization
Dec  6 10:39:52 Dell-Lubuntu kernel: [   12.220965] ivtv-alsa: module 
loading...

My video card is an ATI Radeon X300 PCIe, running the default Radeon 
driver.

Despite the screen messages presumably being displayed because they need 
attention, and despite looking like they are related to S-video TV-out, 
I show lspci output includes:
     Multimedia video controller: Internext Compression Inc iTVC16 
(CX23416) Video Decoder (rev 01)
And there is a kernel module loaded that is related to the same hardware.

It would be nice to hook this up to a TV with S-video to see if it 
actually works, but that would be some work for this desktop. (Maybe 
I'll do it anyway.)

The proprietary ATI fglrx driver reportedly supports TV-Out while the 
Radeon driver commonly does not (dated info?).

But instead of installing the fglrx driver to make these messages go 
away and arrive at fully functioning hardware, I'm starting to wonder if 
everything is installed just fine already, and if instead we have grub 
needlessly selecting some messages to display onscreen.

If that is the case, or if I don't care about TV-out here, I return to 
the original question: Can I hide/suppress these messages, noting that 
"quiet" is already set in the grub command line?
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