Bug 73462 – Sidewinder gamepad module fills the kernel log with debug information in 2.6.x

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED UPSTREAM

[Description Canek Peláez Valdés 2004-12-05 10:07:07 UTC]

As stated in an email from Jeff Garzik:

http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0312.2/1192.html

the sidewinder module fills the kernel log with not very usefull debug information. Besides, the gamepad works perfectly.

This happens with every gentoo-dev-sources kernel from the 2.6.x series.

In the mail there is a patch, but it's only one line. I changed /usr/src/linux/drivers/input/joystick/sidewinder.c:48 from

#define SW_DEBUG

to

/*#define SW_DEBUG*/

and the messages are gone. I'm using gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.9-r9

The module works OK, so the debug messages are useless. And the change is pretty simple.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Load the sidewinder module.
2. Use the Microsoft Sidewinder Gamepad.
3. Use dmesg.

Actual Results:  
Dmesg is fulled with the line:

sidewinder.c: Read 5 triplets. [77773]

Expected Results:  
Not full the kernel log with not very usefull information.

[Comment 1 Micheal Marineau (RETIRED) 2004-12-12 20:16:09 UTC]

Well that sure seems pretty silly.  I wonder why it was never fixed.  You should probably ping LKML again to get that changed.

[Comment 2 Micheal Marineau (RETIRED) 2005-01-01 19:46:58 UTC]

Created attachment 47345 [details, diff]
Disable sidewinder debug messages patch

I have submitted a patch to LKML, lets see if someone comments or commits it. 
If no one has an issue with it but no action is taken I'll start CCing
people...

[Comment 3 Micheal Marineau (RETIRED) 2005-01-11 01:10:03 UTC]

Well, I have not heard from the maintainer or anyone, but it has been in the -ac patchset for a while now.

[Comment 4 Daniel Drake (RETIRED) 2005-01-12 09:40:51 UTC]

Michael, could you please resend this while CC'ing [e-mail] and [e-mail] and [e-mail]

[Comment 5 Micheal Marineau (RETIRED) 2005-01-15 13:17:36 UTC]

Resent to half the world (ok, not really, just a quarter)
It should get in by the next kernel release, if not the trivial patch monkey will follow up on it.  I declare this one officially out of my hands.

PS, for anyone out there who reads this, dsd did add this patch to gentoo-dev-sources.

[Comment 6 Micheal Marineau (RETIRED) 2005-01-22 12:04:26 UTC]

Just FYI, the patch is moving along and was released in 2.6.11-rc1-mm2:
http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.11-rc1/2.6.11-rc1-mm2/broken-out/disable-sidewinder-debug-messages.patch