Annoying ERROR: 'wlan0' is not a DHCP-enabled interface

[Mike Telahun Makonnen]

Hi all,

> I would say that my (ab)use of it in the patch perfectly fits the
> cited usage.  That's not an excuse if the semantics of rc_quiet will
> be different from its current usage, but since we have no
> well-documented semantics apart from "Don't output some diagnostics"
> inside /etc/rc.subr, may be we can just extend this explanation based
> on the current usage and the common sense, add that to the manual page
> of rc.subr and go on?
>
> Any thoughts on this?

The rc_quiet knob was introduced to prevent devd spamming the console
when starting services that weren't enabled in rc.conf.  It was also
overloaded to prevent unnecessary boot time clutter on the console.
The rationale was that if you set a service to start during boot you
don't want a gazillion "bar started" messages to cause the one "Error:
foo not started" message that you would really be interested in seeing
to scroll out of the screen buffer.  It was used for this purpose in
several scripts in rc.d, but it caused quite a ruckus at the time (and
I was too distracted by other work to continue working on it) so its
use was mostly removed from the scripts under /etc/rc.d.  It was not
intended to mask "error" or "debug" messages.

As far as I can tell this discussion affects two groups of people:
1. You didn't configure dhcp on an interface
2. You *thought* you configured an interface for dhcp but it's not
getting an address and there is no feedback
if you're in group 1 you *don't* want to see a message that says the
interface is not configured for dhcp.
If you're in group 2 you *do" want to know.

So, is it more annoying for those in group 1 to get a message about
dhcp not being set every time an interface is started or for those in
group 2 to try to start an interface and not get any feedback when
dhcp is not enabled?

Cheers,
Mike.