Tell the user we're booting

[Peter Wemm]

On Sun, Oct 7, 2012 at 5:30 PM, Devin Teske <devin.teske at fisglobal.com> wrote:
>
> On Oct 7, 2012, at 4:10 PM, Devin Teske wrote:
>
>>
>> On Oct 7, 2012, at 3:53 PM, Garrett Cooper wrote:
>>
>>> On Oct 7, 2012, at 3:39 PM, Devin Teske wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> I'd like to propose a small (tiny even) patch to sys/boot/forth/loader.4th
>>>>
>>>> Said patch will echo "Booting…" before invoking the kernel.
>>>>
>>>> This patch would effect every architecture (even those that don't use the beastie menu).
>>>>
>>>> The reason for proposing this tiny change is that as of 9.0-R I've noticed a significant lag between executing "boot" and getting something on-screen to show that something is happening.
>>>
>>>      This is probably the memory test (set "hw.memtest.tests" to "0" in loader.conf and see if that speeds things up).
>
> woah-nelly! I don't think I can count "one" before I see stuff show up on-screen. That's surely-it.
>
>
>>> Regardless, I think it'd be a good thing to have.
>
> Excellent, I'll move forward with the tiny patch. Thanks. Glad to improve the responsiveness (even if-only perceived).
> --
> Devin
>
> P.S. You'll notice in the patch a ``strange'' ANSI color (37;44) when loader_color=YES, that's white-text on blue-background. That's a color that we've been using for nearly a decade and it seems to work quite well. I think I read somewhere that blue is very soothing and calming (and that Disney knows this very well -- and is why they use a specific percentage of blue in their movie previews). But hey, … we *could* change it (/me runs to commit ^_^)

If DDB/KDB is present and enabled you get a KDB printf before the
memory check delay.  The kernel clearly can afford to do an "I'm
here!" message a little sooner than it currently does.

At times I wonder if we could add something early, like:
        /* Test if the console is working yet. */
        printf(" \\|/ ____ \\|/\n \"@'/ .. \\`@\"\n /_| \\__/ |_\\\n
 \\__U_/\n");

-- 
Peter Wemm - peter at wemm.org; peter at FreeBSD.org; peter at yahoo-inc.com; KI6FJV
"All of this is for nothing if we don't go to the stars" - JMS/B5
"If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete
themselves upon execution." -- Robert Sewell