Re: sparc wscons behavior in -current and netbsd-6

["John D. Baker" <jdbaker%mylinuxisp.com@localhost>]

On my sparc systems that use serial console, I've noticed an odd behavior
with netbsd-6 and -current that did not occur with 5.1_STABLE or earlier.

I added the "cs" (clear screen) capability to the default entry in
"/etc/gettytab".  I turn the "console" entry off and turn the "ttya"
entry on and use "vt100" for the terminal type in "/etc/ttys".  With
netbsd-6 and -current, when 'getty' clears the screen, before it prints
the "im" string, I see:

  $<50>

on the top left on the terminal (I've written it indented 2 spaces above
for display purposes, but it actually appears exactly at the beginning of
the top line of the terminal display).

This occurs even on machines with custom kernel configurations that
omit/remove wscons-related options and devices.  Thinking this might
be an interaction with the "sun-ss5" terminal type in the "console"
terminal (even though it's marked "off"), I changed it to "vt100"
as well.  The behavior remains.  I turned on "ttyb" and it prints
the extraneous string on it, too, when 'getty' clears the screen.

Without the "cs" capability, no extraneous output appears.

On the one machine with a video console (cgsix) that I've been able to
test so far, the "cs" capability causes no extraneous output.

I seem to recall seeing that same extra output on macppc video consoles
as well...

--
|/"\ John D. Baker, KN5UKS               NetBSD     Darwin/MacOS X
|\ / jdbaker[snail]mylinuxisp[flyspeck]com    OpenBSD            FreeBSD
| X  No HTML/proprietary data in email.   BSD just sits there and works!
|/ \ GPGkeyID:  D703 4A7E 479F 63F8 D3F4  BD99 9572 8F23 E4AD 1645