53

My wireless driver is noisy. It prints out messages to the console every 10-30 seconds. So, if I'm working on VT1 or something, I get messages scrolling by all the time. Is there a way to shut this feature off? I like working on the virtual terminals, but this is making it hard to deal with. :)

Any ideas?

Zanna
  • 70,465
dpb
  • 7,069

3 Answers3

59

You can use the command

sudo dmesg -n 1

to suppress all messages from the kernel (and its drivers) except panic messages from appearing on the console.

To fix at each boot, add the command to:

/etc/rc.local
dpb
  • 7,069
oddfellow
  • 3,021
51

dmesg comes with two handy options for that:

-D, --console-off           disable printing messages to console
-E, --console-on            enable printing messages to console

dmesg -D is just a shortcut for dmesg -n 1, except that it stores the current log level, so that you can easily restore it with dmesg -E. So it's a bit more convenient than changing the log level with dmesg -n.

Additionally, you can check the current log level with:

$ cat /proc/sys/kernel/printk
7       4       1       7

man klogctl for more explanations on these numbers...

elboulangero
  • 664
  • 7
  • 8
10

/proc/sys/kernel/printk

You can also set the log level directly with

echo 1 > /proc/sys/kernel/printk

which is basically what dmesg is doing.

The format of that file is explained at: https://superuser.com/a/793692/128124

loglevel command line boot parameter

Sets the initial value at boot time, which allows you to see pre-init messages.

Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com
  • 28,474
  • Hey hey, I tested myself by not reading your answer 1st and I nailed it \o/ that said can this be done with ‘sysctl’? – tijko Aug 18 '22 at 18:15