[driver-discuss] coherent driver event logging behavior

[Dan Mick]

Paul Durrant wrote:
> On 17/05/07, Dana H. Myers <Dana.Myers at sun.com> wrote:
>> I've
>> never understood why some drivers insist on logging link-status, much 
>> less
>> announcing it to the console.  I'm sure there was a once a situation
>> where it
>> came in handy, but I do not know what it was.
>>
> 
> I think it was simply that the console/log used to be the only way to
> convey the information; IFF_RUNNING is a fairly recent addition to the
> IP stack and dladm/libdladm is an even more recent addition to Solaris
> (I know, 'cos I wrote the original code ;-)).
> So my feeling is that Nemo *should* log link status, on behalf of
> drivers, to the system log but *not* to the console and any such
> logging in the drivers themselves should be ripped out.
> 
>  Paul
> 

So, IFF_RUNNING is recent...but it's there now.  Why would we continue to 
log to the messages file?  It's completely redundant.  If someone (most 
likely a driver developer) has some problem where watching the 
second-by-second status of link is important, well, that's what dtrace is for.