n900 verbose boot mode
 

Hello,

just a little question about the boot process:

is it possible to display the boot log at startup instead of having the nokia splashscreen.

Thank you for your answer.

Re: n900 verbose boot mode
 

nobody knows?

Re: n900 verbose boot mode
 

I agree.. I'm a real geek to this kind of stuff and would love to see the dmesg flood the screen on boot!

Re: n900 verbose boot mode
 

exactly what I want, but I'm just a little geek without the knowledge to do this :o

Re: n900 verbose boot mode
 

If your not afraid of getting your hands dirty i'd suggest that you looke here: http://wiki.maemo.org/User:Jebba/Kernel#Kernel

it provides some good information on creating custom kernels and also provides a mirror of kernel modules ;)

Re: n900 verbose boot mode
 

one needs the kernel recompiled to get the full text boot process. So no luck in just flicking a switch somewhere.

Jebba has done plenty of hacks on the kernel, one of them was to enable the viewing of the boot process.

Look at Jebba's wiki page if you feel adventurous :)
http://wiki.maemo.org/User:Jebba#Custom_Kernel_Modules

Have fun !

Re: n900 verbose boot mode
 

aaargh, beaten to it :D

Re: n900 verbose boot mode
 

nice one! on the n900 now and will check this out

Re: n900 verbose boot mode
 

How to make it for current CSSU testing + kernel-power?
(I can't find vere is set option "FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE=y" as written here: http://wiki.maemo.org/User:Jebba/Kernel)

Re: n900 verbose boot mode
 

Is this possible yet?

Re: n900 verbose boot mode
 

Of course it's possible. You just need to compile your kernel with enabled framebuffer.

If that's not an option, you can "modprobe fbcon" somewhere in /sbin/preinit. This has been discussed a number of times here.

Re: n900 verbose boot mode
 

Ok, how do I do this? "modprobe fbcon" somewhere in /sbin/preinit.

Re: n900 verbose boot mode
 

Yes, exactly!
And if you still have question, be aware that this may brick your device.
Doing a power search with "modprobe fbcon" will lead you the way ("recovery console thread").

Re: n900 verbose boot mode
 

Can you please give me a step by step description?

Re: n900 verbose boot mode
 

/sbin/preinit is a script. You can guess when it is run.
modprobe is a utility to add or remove a loadable kernel module, such as fbcon.
fbcon is a frame buffer console.

The theory is that adding the line to the right place in the script will enable the frame buffer and hence the verbose output, provided you have the right kernel. Doing a search (a white box in the top right with "Search" in it and an orange box next to it with "GO" in it) indicates that kernel-power is such a kernel. See for example this post, it looks promising. Better still, search for "modprobe fbcon" in the whole thread. It's mentioned several times.

That's about as far as I can go at this time of night (01:35). I do not have a burning desire for a verbose boot output and, as peterleinchen says, screwing up may brick the device, so I will leave experimenting for some other time.

Re: n900 verbose boot mode
 

You've been given enough information to figure it out for yourself. If you can't make any use of this, then I suggest you don't play with /sbin/preinit. Otherwise you'll come back with a new thread "My N900 is bricked, HELP!!".

Why do you need to see the console output during boot? You won't have time to read anything anyway as X (and hildon-desktop) will load in a matter of seconds.