Re: patches to optionally clear the screen during boot.

[christos%astron.com@localhost (Christos Zoulas)]

In article <20081215030217.32EFB5989D%thoreau.thistledown.com.au@localhost>,
Simon Burge  <simonb%NetBSD.org@localhost> wrote:
>David Laight wrote:
>> On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 10:10:04PM +0000, Andrew Doran wrote:
>> > On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 04:41:17PM -0500, Christos Zoulas wrote:
>> > 
>> > > Currently the x86 boot code clears the screen which seems un-unix like
>> > > and unnecessary.
>> > 
>> > In the past there was not much point. Today we have a boot menu and there i
>s
>> > information for new users to absorb and act upon, so the screen is cleared.
>> 
>> The problem is that a serial console throws away useful info.
>> (Like the soekris bios does when the system resets!)
>> 
>> It is almost more sensible to output a reasonable number of linefeeds.
>
>I've still got the "scroll" keyword patch for boot.cfg I proposed in
>http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-i386/2008/05/21/msg000537.html as a
>local change here.  I never committed that as there didn't seem to be
>any real interest...

I'd say merge the functionality and document the different behavior in
glass tty and serial consoles.

christos