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

Sun Dec 7 19:31:50 UTC 2014

On 12/6/2014 7:27 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.

Victory!

I created /etc/sysctl.d/20-quiet-printk.conf with content:
kernel.printk = 3 3 3 3

I hit Return at the end, since an End-Of-Line character may be required 
to make the line effective.

This overrides the default behavior established in 
/etc/sysctl.d/10-console-messages.conf with content:
kernel.printk = 4 4 1 7

The unwanted messages did not appear at the next boot (they are still 
available in /var/log/kern.log and syslog, however).

I note that /etc/sysctrl.d/README instructs that 'service procps start' 
should be run after any changes, but this merely results in an output of 
'unknown job: procps' and proved to be unnecessary anyway.

The critical piece of instruction came from 
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Silent_boot

Though I was curious to know a bit more about the mechanisms in play, I 
didn't dig much further than that.  I wondered, for instance, what 
behavior the default '4 4 1 7' specified, but never did find out.  The 
files in sysctl.d are installed by procps (see the List of Files link at 
http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/admin/procps). And these, in turn, are 
part of the kernel configuration governed by sysctl (see 
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/en/man8/sysctl.8.html).

Still looking for the meaning of '4 4 1 7' vs '3 3 3 3' I came to 
https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/printk-formats.txt, but my eyes 
glazed over just skimming that, and I stopped there.
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