From:	 Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>
To:	 Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@mandrakesoft.com>
Subject: Re: Cosmetic JFFS patch.
Date:	 Thu, 28 Jun 2001 12:25:28 -0700 (PDT)
Cc:	 Patrick Dreker <patrick@dreker.de>,
	 Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
	 David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>, <jffs-dev@axis.com>,
	 <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>


On Thu, 28 Jun 2001, Jeff Garzik wrote:
>
> As Alan said, driver versions are incredibly useful.  People use update
> their drivers over top of kernel drivers all the time.  Vendors do it
> too.  "Run dmesg and e-mail me the output" is 1000 times more simple for
> end users.

Fair enough. Especially as "dmesg" will output even the debugging messages
that do not actually end up being printed on the screen unless explicitly
asked for.

I'd also like to acknowledge the fact that at bootup it's usually very
nice to see "what was the last message it printed before it hung", and
that there's a fair reason for drivers to print out a single line of "I
just registered myself" for that reason. If that line happens to contain a
version string, all the better.

And if the user has to boot with "debug" to see all the information when
the machine hangs at bootup (when you can't just mail dmesg), that's
probably acceptable.

		Linus

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