Question: is it really critical that all of the hardware probe messages
always be accessible via the blind-mode console? How about this as a
proposal:
All kernels will have support for turning on/off "blind mode" via the
escape sequences. Init will recognize the kernel command line argument
"blind=1", and if it sees it, it will send the escape sequence to all of
the console. A blind person who wishes to see the boot messages gets
Linux running using the above procedure, and then recompiles a kernel
whose default mode is "blind mode on". That will allow the blind person
to see the hardware probing boot messages.
That simplifies the changes to the kernel, and hopefully it meets your
requirements. What do you think?
- Ted