console_unblank() does this too (called in both places right after),
and with a lot more confidence inspiring approach to locking.

Reconstructing this story is very strange:

In b61312d3 ("oops handling: ensure that any oops is flushed to
the mtdoops console") it is claimed that a printk(" "); flushed out
the console buffer, which was removed in e3e8a75d ("[PATCH]
Extract and use wake_up_klogd()"). In todays kernels this is done way
earlier in console_flush_on_panic with some really nasty tricks. I
didn't bother to fully reconstruct this all, least because the call to
bust_spinlock(0); gets moved every few years, depending upon how the
wind blows (or well, who screamed loudest about the various issue each
call site caused).

Before that commit the only calls to console_unblank() where in s390
arch code.

The other side here is the console->unblank callback, which was
introduced in 2.1.31 for the vt driver. Which predates the
console_unblank() function by a l...