From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jul 13 16:05:29 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DB88E16A4CE for ; Tue, 13 Jul 2004 16:05:29 +0000 (GMT) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [204.156.12.50]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8901743D53 for ; Tue, 13 Jul 2004 16:05:29 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Received: from fledge.watson.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by fledge.watson.org (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id i6DG5Eiq075683 for ; Tue, 13 Jul 2004 12:05:14 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Received: from localhost (robert@localhost)i6DG5E8T075680 for ; Tue, 13 Jul 2004 12:05:14 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 12:05:14 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Watson X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: questions@FreeBSD.org Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Subject: BIOS console redirection *and* serial console with FreeBSD X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 16:05:30 -0000 I have access to several boxes that support "BIOS console redirection", in which access to the BIOS and BIOS-based console I/O is redirected to a serial port. This is pretty neat functionality, as it allows me to reconfigure RAID arrays, change a variety of system settings, boot preferences, etc, via the serial console. However, I run into a problem when I attempt to use BIOS redirection with FreeBSD's native serial console support. If I just configure a login session on ttyd0, it pops up once the boot completes and appears perfectly workable. However, if I turn on 'console="comconsole"' in loader.conf, the system will appear to hang or otherwise wedge rather than boot. Currently, the boxes where I've experienced this are all remote, so I can't report on what actually appears on the console -- however, the systems appear to never boot. My ideal world order would have a natural transition from BIOS console redirection to FreeBSD's serial console, letting me configure BIOS/RAID settings, configure loader pieces (swap kernels, set tunables, etc), then onto the kernel serial console pieces, and finally launching a login session on ttyd0. Does anyone have experience with making this actually happen, or similar experience with it not working? I'm seeing it right now on a recent Xeon Intel-based motherboard ("Westville"), but also on an older Intel ServerWorkers PIII motherboard. Is the FreeBSD loader serial code doing something un-kosher that the BIOS redirection implementation doesn't like? Can we make it behave better? Or is the BIOS redirection implementation just broken when it comes to dealing with use of the serial port by the OS? Thanks, Robert N M Watson FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Projects robert@fledge.watson.org Principal Research Scientist, McAfee Research