Avoiding Screen Pollution from Kernel Messges
Don't
you
just
hate
it
when
kernel
messages
pollute
your
display
in
the
form
of
those
annoying
black
rectangles
overlaid
above
whatever
you're
working
on?
This
is
a
known
bug
in
rio(1);
for
further
detail,
see
Rob
Pike's
message
to
this
effect.
To work around this problem, open a new terminal window and do:
cat /dev/kprint
This works because, according to the kprint discussion in cons(3), "if (the) console is a graphics screen, the data is sent either to the display or to kprint, but not both."
Another more permanent solution to the problem is to put
cat /dev/kprint >/dev/null >[2=1]
somewhere in termrc (see cpurc(8)).