From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Jul 24 18:27:31 1995 Return-Path: questions-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.11/8.6.6) id SAA00175 for questions-outgoing; Mon, 24 Jul 1995 18:27:31 -0700 Received: from lupine.nsi.nasa.gov (lupine.nsi.nasa.gov [198.116.2.100]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.11/8.6.6) with ESMTP id SAA00169 for ; Mon, 24 Jul 1995 18:27:28 -0700 Received: (from mnewell@localhost) by lupine.nsi.nasa.gov (8.6.12/8.6.12) id VAA22760; Mon, 24 Jul 1995 21:25:20 -0400 Date: Mon, 24 Jul 1995 21:25:19 -0400 (EDT) From: "Michael C. Newell" To: Joe McGuckin cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Headless/keyboardless booting... In-Reply-To: <199507240710.AAA04047@mustang.via.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: questions-owner@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk On Mon, 24 Jul 1995, Joe McGuckin wrote: > Can freebsd boot without a keyboard or video card? Can a > serial port be configured as the console port for diagnostic > and boot messages? I'd like to put a 486 in a closet & not > waste a keyboard and video card/monitor. I'd like the option > of plugging in a noteboot to the serial port if it ever developed > problems that couldn't be fixed over a telnet connection. > > I'm looking for similar functionality that I get with a headless > Sun workstation. The answer is: sort of. :-) Generally, especially older PCs required a keyboard. Some clever person decided it made sense to issue errors like: keyboard error Press to continue. which makes a lot of sense if you don't have a keyboard in the first place. Anyway, most newer BIOSen allow you to disable the keyboard missing error; on my AMI bios I set the "Keyboard not installed" flag. This is a misleading flag, since if I set it and a keyboard IS present it works fine... I've not seen ANY PC that will boot without a video card of some sort; they always fail in POST. What we did was get an ancient CGA card from a junk box at a HAM fest for $1 and stuff that in. It's enough to get past POST. To get a serial port to work as a console port (a la a headless Sun) use the "options COMCONSOLE" in your kernel build. Check out the FreeBSD Web pages ("http://www.freebsd.org"); there's a page that explains how to do this in detail. Hope this helps!! Mike +--------------------------------------+------------------------------------+ |Mike Newell | The opinions expressed herein are | |NASA Science Internet Network Systems | my own, and do not necessarily | |Sterling Software, Inc. | reflect those of the NSI program, | |MNewell@nsipo.nasa.gov | Sterling Software, NASA, or anyone | |+1-202-434-8954 | else. | +--------------------------------------+------------------------------------+ | work: http://www.eco.nsi.nasa.gov/~mnewell | | home: http://www.newell.arlington.va.us | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+