Re: [patch] early printk and boot console fixups.

[Bjorn Helgaas <bjorn.helgaas@hp.com>]

On Thursday 17 May 2007 03:45:36 am Maciej W. Rozycki wrote:
> On Wed, 16 May 2007, Bjorn Helgaas wrote:
> > >  Given the generic name of "uart" I am assuming this will work with any 
> > > UART driver making use of the serial_core.c core -- am I correct?
> > 
> > I knew somebody would ask that eventually :-)
> > 
> > Unfortunately, the answer is "no."  "console=uart" only works with
> > 8250-compatible devices.
> 
>  But is it a design limitation or is it just that other UART drivers have 
> to be modified to work with this option?  My point is if the former, then 
> the option should be something like "console=8250" (the right-hand side 
> being the name of the driver involved; others may want to add support for 
> other drivers).  If the latter, then it's fine as is as other UART drivers 
> may be wired to this code as a need arises.

"console=8250" probably would have been a better choice.  I think
this could be changed without too much hassle.

It might be possible to extend "console=uart" so one could do
"console=uart,io,0x3f8,9600n8,21285" (where "21285" is a non-8250
UART type).  But that seems ugly to me.  I'd rather have
"console=21285", "console=68328", etc.

I just want the "console=<tag>" to explicitly identify the UART
type so we don't have to poke at the thing and guess what it is.

Bjorn