Jose H. wrote:
Kernel messages since a certain time and hide the hardware specs from users
will be achieved the same way, suppose you have a parameter for dmesg that
prints the current buffer and then clears it.
I don't think it is a silly knob, in fact it may be the only knob you can
have, dmesg holds messages/texts, you can print it, and you can clear it,
other than that may be a silly knob.
Possible uses for this ?, you bet people will find them, the whole idea of
unix is to have specialized tools you can put together to do great things,
in this case dmesg will be doing that has to do with kernel messages, but
your approach is to relay on external mechanisms to accomplish something
that dmesg can do easily, see HP-UX for example, and the fact that other
important unix flavors use this knob.
asking for extra knobs in openbsd will always get the same answer: saw
it off!
the cases where people, such as yourself, desire or require knobs have
an easy enough solution: fix it yourself. it's clear that there is
little to no interest in changing this based on the minimal dev replies.
don't press your luck or you might get a whammy.
cheers,
jake
Also, consider the security factor, you can hide information from users as
Stuart pointed out.
From my stand point it is useful and appropriate, if you have to rewrite
kernel code it may otherwise.
