<html> <head> <meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type"> </head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> <div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 12/7/2014 2:31 PM, John Hupp wrote: </div> <blockquote cite="mid:5484AB26.80809@prpcompany.com" type="cite"> <meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type"> <div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 12/6/2014 7:27 PM, John Hupp wrote: </div> <blockquote cite="mid:54839EE2.3090708@prpcompany.com" type="cite"> <meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type"> <div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 12/6/2014 6:59 PM, John Hupp wrote: </div> <blockquote cite="mid:54839865.4000707@prpcompany.com" type="cite"> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> 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 <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QuietenGrub">https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QuietenGrub</a> that proposes in the definition for quiet: <blockquote>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. </blockquote> So I concluded that quiet was working as designed, and that my on-screen messages must fall into the category of errors/warnings. <hr size="2" width="100%"> 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 (<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.ivtvdriver.org">www.ivtvdriver.org</a>) 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? </blockquote> 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. </blockquote> 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 <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Silent_boot">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Silent_boot</a> 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 <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/admin/procps">http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/admin/procps</a>). And these, in turn, are part of the kernel configuration governed by sysctl (see <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/en/man8/sysctl.8.html">http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/en/man8/sysctl.8.html</a>). Still looking for the meaning of '4 4 1 7' vs '3 3 3 3' I came to <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/printk-formats.txt">https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/printk-formats.txt</a>, but my eyes glazed over just skimming that, and I stopped there. </blockquote> Marius Gedminas and Tom H on the Ubuntu list helpfully steered me to the documentation I wanted: <a href="http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/en/man5/proc.5.html">http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/en/man5/proc.5.html</a> (see /proc/sys/kernel/printk) <a href="http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/en/man2/syslog.2.html">http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/en/man2/syslog.2.html</a> (see The Loglevel) Desirous of not fiddling with the system more than needed, I set 'kernel.printk = 3 4 1 7' and this still achieved suppression of the unwanted messages. </body> </html>