Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:11:27 -0700 From: Doug Barton <dougb@FreeBSD.org> To: Marcel Moolenaar <xcllnt@mac.com> Cc: Mark Linimon <linimon@lonesome.com>, FreeBSD CURRENT Mailing List <freebsd-current@freebsd.org>, peterjeremy@acm.org Subject: Re: Reducing noise in dmesg output Message-ID: <4AB289DF.5020303@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <642B63E0-0F75-45FD-9E8D-58D990F7C8EB@mac.com> References: <200909010931.16880.nick@van-laarhoven.org> <1251841416.1689.4458.camel@balrog.2hip.net> <200909021656.15747.nick@van-laarhoven.org> <f0dd9eb90909021739o4d31c88l5be6638f7998dae6@mail.gmail.com> <20090904100847.GA13167@server.vk2pj.dyndns.org> <20090904101630.GA17207@camelot.theinternet.com.au> <20090904135252.GA23438@lonesome.com> <642B63E0-0F75-45FD-9E8D-58D990F7C8EB@mac.com>
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Marcel Moolenaar wrote:
>
> On Sep 4, 2009, at 6:52 AM, Mark Linimon wrote:
>
>> No one has mentioned the other reason to leave in verbosity: so that
>> users
>> who are having problems can file more useful PRs. This is particularly
>> true of video cards (which, as one might recall, is where this thread
>> started.)
>
> This has always been an interesting fault-line.
>
> Yes, if you print or log "everything" then there's bound to
> be useful information somewhere that can be used to analyze
> problems. Approaching this from the glass half-empty angle,
> I can see why people value verbosity. It's an easy case to
> state: without it we don't know what went wrong.
>
> There's a flip-side and it's one that's much harder to argue
> for. Arguments against verbosity include such things as:
> 1. The signal/noise ratio is worse which means that it's
> easier to miss the information that is truly important.
> 2. You present the user with output that's not even directed
> towards the user -- it's an aesthetic bug.
> 3. It introduces performance problems, especially on slow
> consoles.
> 4. If it works, it works and the verbosity is unnecessary.
>
> Much more subjective...
>
> As long as we depend on verbosity to provide us with the
> information we need to solve a problem, it's really hard to
> convince people that we should make it more user-oriented
> and print only things that are of value to the user. Which
> means that unless developers value the user perspective and
> are willing to put in the effort to allow for another way
> of obtaining the information, verbosity is hard to reduce.
> It's not in the developer's interest. That is, unless the
> problem reporting is actually much better if done differently.
Marcel has several good points here. I'd also like to point out that
there is a middle ground which I haven't seen mentioned yet,
dramatically reduce what goes to the console while sending all of what
we do now (or potentially even more) to syslog by default.
Doug
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