linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 4.19 66/78] fbcon: remove soft scrollback code

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Date:   Wed, 16 Sep 2020 10:25:10 +0200
From:   Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To:     Pavel Machek <pavel@...x.de>
Cc:     jikos@...e.cz, vojtech@...e.cz, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        stable@...r.kernel.org, Yuan Ming <yuanmingbuaa@...il.com>,
        Willy Tarreau <w@....eu>,
        Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz <b.zolnierkie@...sung.com>,
        Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter@...ll.ch>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 4.19 66/78] fbcon: remove soft scrollback code

On Wed, Sep 16, 2020 at 09:57:59AM +0200, Pavel Machek wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> > From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
> > 
> > commit 50145474f6ef4a9c19205b173da6264a644c7489 upstream.
> > 
> > This (and the VGA soft scrollback) turns out to have various nasty small
> > special cases that nobody really is willing to fight.  The soft
> > scrollback code was really useful a few decades ago when you typically
> > used the console interactively as the main way to interact with the
> > machine, but that just isn't the case any more.
> > 
> > So it's not worth dragging along.
> 
> It is still useful.
> 
> In particular, kernel is now very verbose, so important messages
> during bootup scroll away. It is way bigger deal when you can no
> longer get to them using shift-pageup.
> 
> fsck is rather verbose, too, and there's no easy way to run that under
> X terminal... and yes, that makes scrollback very useful, too.
> 
> So, I believe we'll need to fix this. I guess I could do it. I also
> guess I'll not have to, because SuSE or RedHat will want to fix it.
> 
> Anyway, this really should not be merged into stable.

It's merged into the stable trees that _I_ have to maintain.  If you
want to revert it for trees you maintain and wish to keep secure, that's
up to you.  But it's something that I _STRONGLY_ do not advise doing.

See the email recently on oss-devel for one such reason why this was
removed...

good luck!

greg k-h