O for a REAL Console... Doing server-ish stuff on the cheap
 

Hi Folks,
Suddenly I could really use an old style console nicely integrated into the kernel. In the 90's this was something most production SAs hated. Headless is great, but I'm asking _86 machines to do some cool, server-ish stuff, sometimes integrating really old products.

You'll know what I mean if you have been around AIX or HP-UX with full startup logging to the console (a real, physical device gathering dust) and kernel msgs echoed likewise, usually to an overpriced 30-year old terminal.

So I start to make a start...

From Greg K Hartman, Linux Kernel Nutshell/2006 and all around good read:

earlyprintk
Show early boot messages
<..snip ahead..>These messages are typically never seen on the
console unless you use this option. Enabling this can be very useful
for tracking down hardware issues. Currently, the option can
specify either the VGA device or the serial port, but not both at the
same time. Also, only the ttyS0 or ttyS1 serial devices will work.
Interaction with the standard serial driver is not very good, and the
VGA output will eventually be overwritten by the real console.
Append ,keep in order not to disable the messages shown by this
option when the real kernel console is initialized and takes over the
system.

earlyprintk() is not easy to implement, at least not by a mere applications guy. Worse, Greg is rather diplomatic about its shortcomings.

Any ideas, short of "get 'yer self a 1995 HP K-Server, 'ya old bugger," are quite welcome.

Cheers!
TheOldCodeToad