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

Israel israeldahl at gmail.com
Sun Dec 7 03:59:06 UTC 2014


On 12/06/2014 06:27 PM, John Hupp wrote:
> On 12/6/2014 6:59 PM, John Hupp wrote:
>> 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?
>
> I should add that 'xrandr --props' reports S-video properties, so that
> further supports for me the idea that the kernel messages were
> needlessly selected for display.
>
>
Hi John,
I don't have the slightest clue as to where to point you, but this
thread is very interesting to me :)
I do not have any graphics cards with TV (anything).  Nor do I know how
to suppress boot error/warnings for plymouth..
But, I did read your very interesting question, and wondered if this is
possible.. and ALSO, if you could simply redirect this to a file.
It would be much handier for users if this stderr-type output could be
redirected to something like ~/.boot-errors.log

For anyone following this, that doesn't know right off what stderr
means......  stderr is the standard error output.  This usually defaults
to the console (terminal) screen, though in most shell scripts you can
redirect it to a file like I am proposing.

One last thing.. John, you might get a bit of info in finding out what
language plymouth is programmed in... there very well may be a way to
surpress this on the screen and direct it into a file with the date/time
stamp (after checking something like sort -u)...

Really this is very intriguing, you always pose such deep interesting
thoughts about the inner workings... I really enjoy your inputs here!

-- 
Regards

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