On Sun, 26 Aug 2007, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:

What I mean is that probably there used to be a printk() call starting with
`\n'. Then someone added a `KERN_ERR' in front of it.

 I gather '\n' at the beginning is to assure the following line is output 
on a separate line rather than as a continuation of another one which may 
have been output without a trailing '\n'.  A situation where printk() is 
called with a string containing no trailing '\n' may be discouraged, but 
there are some more or less justified exceptions.  For example the SCSI 
disk spin-up code is one.

 Therefore it may be reasonable for more critical messages -- perhaps not 
ones at KERN_ERR, but certainly KERN_CRIT and higher ones -- that may 
potentially happen asynchronously to start with '\n'.  In this case a call 
would look like this:

	printk("\n" KERN_CRIT "The actual message.\n");

Of course based on "console_loglevel" and "default_message_level" the 
leading '\n' may still get swallowed from what gets printed to the console 
terminal, but in reality I do not think that poses a problem, as these 
both can be set by a system administrator according to the local policy.

  Maciej

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