Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1999 21:12:41 -0400 (EDT) From: "Crist J. Clark" <cjc@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com> To: Doug@gorean.org (Doug) Cc: cjclark@home.com, skalir@hotmail.com (skalir scalar), freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: serial cable login Message-ID: <199909240112.VAA32455@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com> In-Reply-To: <37E9BBC8.EE9AF49A@gorean.org> from Doug at "Sep 22, 1999 10:34:00 pm"
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Doug wrote, > "Crist J. Clark" wrote: > > > > Doug wrote, > > > > Unfortunately at this time there is no way on -Current or -Stable > > > to get just the tty without first booting with a serial console. IIRC it > > > has something to do with the way the new boot blocks work. Assuming there > > > is no keyboard plugged into the machine you want the tty on, just put '-P' > > > in /boot.config (no 'quotes'), edit the /etc/ttys file as indicated in the > > > handbook and reboot. Your tty will come up after the boot. Meanwhile, if > > > you are going to have a serial terminal hooked up anyway, you might as > > > well have the console, it's pretty slick stuff. :) > > > > Hey, Doug. You contribute a lot on this list and usually give pretty > > good answers, but I just have to say of this response, "What the heck > > are you talking about, dude?" > > > > The first sentence is Just Plain Wrong. To get the tty alive, you just > > need to edit /etc/ttys and have init re-read it with a 'kill -HUP 1'. > > Thank you for the kind words. I do know that what you are describing is > how it is _supposed_ to work. However I've done numerous new installs of > both -current and -stable in the last two months, and it has been > universally true that merely enabling the tty before booting with an > option that directs output to the serial console (like boot -P) has not > been enough to bring the tty up. In every case I had to reboot with -P > or -h, then the tty came up as advertised. Reporting this problem was on > my list, however till now it was pretty far down there due to about 148 > other things being more important right now. > > You can easily demonstrate this for yourself. Remove all traces of your > serial console settings, like /boot.config, /etc/ttys, /etc/make.conf, > kernel config file, and anything else you might have changed. Then do a > make world, make a new kernel and reboot. Now try bringing up the tty by > simply editing /etc/ttys and hup'ing init. I'd lay money that it won't > work for you till you boot -P. I'm not sure if we are all talking about the same thing. The original poster just wanted to, "login over a serial cable from one machine to another." He was not talking about getting console output to this connection, he just wanted a live tty on a machine that I presume was already up. I too have set up a couple of machines this way (two 3.2 and one 2.2.8). I believe in all cases I just plugged in the serial cable and once I got all of the settings in /etc/ttys to agree with the settings on my terminal, they worked; no reboots. I know for a _fact_ that I did not need to reboot the 2.2.8 machine because it's our mailserver and I never bring that puppy down except for hardware upgrades, kernel security fixes, or wisps of smoke curling out of the case. Now getting boot output to the serial terminal... that was another game all together. -- Crist J. Clark cjclark@home.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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