> The problems with messages like the above are:
> 
> a) if every driver had "informative" messages like that, then when 
> booting, it's very likely that the autoconfig would scroll off the 
> screen way too fast making diagnosis of other problems more difficult.
> 
> b) Since pretty much every "useful" driver is included in a GENERIC
> kernel for installation purposes, those sorts of messages make it 
> very difficult for an installation program to parse and easily determine
> the hardware configuration of the machine.

AMEN.

"useful diagnostics" shouldn't be the default during driver probe.
You can say anything you want while attaching, but if you're not
there, you shouldn't be talking.

They shouldn't even be "#ifdef DIAGNOSTIC".  They should have to be
specially compiled in, or, better yet, enabled with a patchable
variable.

Actually, best yet would be a way to enable device autoconfig debug
messages at boot time (e.g. a flag to the boot program), but that's
another story...


chris