[Rule-list] Logging of events during bootup

[Will Ganz]

A modest proposal. ;-)

I have seen several threads between installers and the configurators as to
what/how/when/how long certain things occurred during installation. There
have been several exchanges & redefining of terms until understanding was
accomplished.

My suggestion is, for at least this development phase, to have the option to
log the various terminal outputs to text files on the floppy.

Specifically, add to the bootup an option to make a series of log files to
the boot floppy(i.e. ks=floppy mem=12M logging=floppy). At designated points
during the bootup sequence, the output to the various terminals would be
tee'd to an ASCII text log file on the boot floppy into a separate
subdirectory. This would give a series of text log files with date/time
stamps to show when certain events occurred. In the event of a
'hung'/stalled/bad installation, there would be some log files on the boot
floppy for a postmortem analysis. This would eliminate the questions of "how
long did it take for action X to occur??" A look at the date/time stamps on
the files would give this information. These files could also be sent in
emails to the configurators. This would give the configurators a standard
format to look at plus they would be able to then parse it with their
favourite scripting language to grab the information that they want.

An example
log00.txt
1801
ks=floppy mem=12M logging=floppy
hda=BrandX 1.2 meg
sda=cdrom
video=1meg
bios=Award ver5.22a

log01.txt
1810
swap=succesful
swap=16M

log02.txt
1815
eth0=3Com EtherLink III


I am starting to ramble. Any comments, suggestions, criticisms, idle
thoughts, or ?????????


Respectfully,


Will Ganz