[ros-kernel] /CONSOLE switch

[Ge van Geldorp]

In my blog entry about "Login, logout and shutdown" I wrote:

> For the future, I want to do some work on winlogon, since
> it is rather messy at the moment to put it nicely. One of
> the improvements of ReactOS over Windows is that we have
> the capability to start up in console mode. Only when a GUI
> app is started will the screen switch to graphics mode. I'd
> like to consolidate this by introducing a "/CONSOLE" boot
> switch. When this switch is not present on the boot line,
> Winlogon will load the program specified by the "Shell"
> registry value, normally this will be (ROS) explorer,
> causing the screen to switch to graphics mode. With the
> boot switch present, Winlogon will load the program
> specified by the "ConsoleShell" registry value (to be
> added), which normally will be cmd.exe running in "blue
> screen" mode.
> The same boot switch can also be used to prompt for login
> name and password. Our GINA (Graphical Identification and
> Authentication, the component which is responsible for the
> winlogon user interface) dll can check for the presence of
> the switch and present either a console-mode login prompt
> or a GUI prompt. Of course, since we don't have any proper
> security anyway, this will also be a good time to implement
> auto-login (using the "DefaultUserName" registry value), as
> I don't want to type a (mostly useless at this moment)
> username/password every time I boot ReactOS for testing.

to which Emanuele replied:

> I am totally against the /CONSOLE switch. This is a behaviour
> that must be handled at subsystem level (the dominant subsystem,
> of course, that is W32)

I'm moving the discussion to ros-kernel because I think a mailing list
is more suited for discussion than a blog.

My plan was to have ntoskrnl set a registry value based on the presence
or absence of /CONSOLE. That would be the end of the involvement of the
kernel. The winlogon behaviour described above would then be keyed on
that registry value. I'm not sure if I understand you correctly, but are
you saying that I should scrap the ntoskrl part but the winlogon part is
ok (just need another method to set the registry key)? That would kill
one of the nice features: being able to boot into console mode on a
system which normally runs in graphics mode, for the purpose of making
repairs. Also note that there is some "prior art" wrt. boot options and
registry values: this is exactly what the NT4 /BASEVIDEO switch does.

Gé van Geldorp.