Date:        Thu, 6 Jul 2000 11:51:06 -0700 (PDT)
    From:        Matthew Jacob <mjacob@feral.com>
    Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.10.10007061149070.20481-100000@beppo.feral.com>

  | What we should have is something *like* prtconf that can print
  | a device's h/w infrastructure from userland.

I agree, that would be nice, and certainly has its uses (for anyone
who ever decides to do that, bonus points for actually being able to
print the hardware section of a config(8) format file to match the
current running system).

But that and bootverbose are pretty much orthagonal.  prtconf or
similar, will tell me what is there, what bootverbose ought to be
doing is telling me all that is not there, and why the kernel believes
that.

That is, if I know that I have some random card is plugged in (I
can see the thing...) why can't the kernel see it?  Bootverbose (if
done properly) would tell me that - it would list all the devices probed,
and say why the driver gave up on finding that device.

I'm in two minds about it on install floppies - sure it would be
great to have, so when installing you'd know that your ethernet card
isn't being recognised because it is strapped to the wrong address,
and thus what to change to fix it.   (Since clearly compiling a new
kernel isn't an option at this stage.)   But it will make the kernel
bigger, and that might be just too much to take.   Perhaps a "kernel
only" floppy image (with no embedded filesys) which would just boot,
then panic (no root, no init) - but would at least find all the
hardware that exists (and with a verbose boot, why other hw is ignored)
so those problems could be corrected when needed, then go back to
the regular install.   It wants to be a kernel so it can be built
from the same sources (and config file) as the real install kernel,
so divergence doesn't cause the two to act differently.

kre