Avoiding Screen Pollution from Kernel Messges
-as of Mon Jan 14 16:21:29 EST 2008-
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)).