Screen clearing during boot

[andyj]

During the boot process the screen is cleared twice: Once at the beginning of tc-config, and again in /root/.profile. It would be nice if there was a way to prevent this so we could see error messages before they get zapped. The first would be easy to solve, and so my request is that the clear command (which is the first executable statement in tc-config) be moved to the end of rcS just before tc-config is called. Since rcS is designed to be customizable across versions, it would be up to the end user to keep it or not. The second place would be to move it from /root/.profile to /etc/skel/.profile so again each user could have it or not. I think this would be better than creating a kernel command line option and checking for it. That just sounds like more overhead (bloat).

[curaga]

Do you mean the "pause" bootcode?

[andyj]

No. Pause only addresses the second clear sort of, insofar as you get to see what's on the screen since the first clear before it's cleared again after you acknowledge the pause. I would like it to boot completely and unattended so I can see kernel errors, TC errors, and profile errors all together and no clearing at all. This makes debugging easier than trying to remember what was on a previous screen that might have been relevant to the error I'm looking at now.

[curaga]

Okay, moving the first clear is fine. I'm not sure about the second one, root's .profile changes about as rarely as rcS, and it is read after backup restore anyway.

I don't have time to test it now, please ping in a week or two if I forget.

[andyj]

Since as you say .profile shouldn't change anymore than rcS, I should be OK just taking the clear commands out of those two in my secondary initrd. Moving the first one from tc-config should get me where I want to be. I don't want to be dealing with backporting changes to tc-config with every version. Thanks.

[curaga]

Changed in git, look for it in the next release.