printk/console: Allow to disable console output by using console="" or console=null
authorPetr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Wed, 11 Nov 2020 13:54:50 +0000 (14:54 +0100)
committerPetr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Fri, 20 Nov 2020 11:29:05 +0000 (12:29 +0100)
commit3cffa06aeef7ece30f6b5ac0ea51f264e8fea4d0
treeac16d87d173ddb92a2d26e9c99d9e5ffd1c0afb0
parent757055ae8dedf5333af17b3b5b4b70ba9bc9da4e
printk/console: Allow to disable console output by using console="" or console=null

The commit 48021f98130880dd74 ("printk: handle blank console arguments
passed in.") prevented crash caused by empty console= parameter value.

Unfortunately, this value is widely used on Chromebooks to disable
the console output. The above commit caused performance regression
because the messages were pushed on slow console even though nobody
was watching it.

Use ttynull driver explicitly for console="" and console=null
parameters. It has been created for exactly this purpose.

It causes that preferred_console is set. As a result, ttySX and ttyX
are not used as a fallback. And only ttynull console gets registered by
default.

It still allows to register other consoles either by additional console=
parameters or SPCR. It prevents regression because it worked this way even
before. Also it is a sane semantic. Preventing output on all consoles
should be done another way, for example, by introducing mute_console
parameter.

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20201006025935.GA597@jagdpanzerIV.localdomain
Suggested-by: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Guenter Roeck <linux@roeck-us.net>
Tested-by: Guenter Roeck <linux@roeck-us.net>
Acked-by: Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20201111135450.11214-3-pmladek@suse.com
kernel/printk/printk.c