From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Jan 8 13:34:46 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id NAA10521 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 8 Jan 1996 13:34:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de (irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de [141.76.1.11]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id NAA10471 for ; Mon, 8 Jan 1996 13:34:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from sax.sax.de by irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de (8.6.12/8.6.12-s1) with ESMTP id WAA09245; Mon, 8 Jan 1996 22:33:58 +0100 Received: by sax.sax.de (8.6.11/8.6.12-s1) with UUCP id WAA08312; Mon, 8 Jan 1996 22:33:57 +0100 Received: (from j@localhost) by uriah.heep.sax.de (8.7.3/8.6.9) id WAA16563; Mon, 8 Jan 1996 22:16:35 +0100 (MET) From: J Wunsch Message-Id: <199601082116.WAA16563@uriah.heep.sax.de> Subject: Re: Dual Monitor Systems... To: regnauld@tetard.frmug.fr.net (Philippe Regnauld) Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 22:16:34 +0100 (MET) Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) In-Reply-To: <199601080015.BAA01716@tetard.frmug.fr.net> from "Philippe Regnauld" at Jan 8, 96 01:15:51 am X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669 X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk As Philippe Regnauld wrote: > > ... Let's say I'm not debugging an X server :-) > > As I said earlier, my prior concern is not toasting my 19" monitor > (it's a fixed frequency) in the time between bootup and the start > of the X server. I'd gladly use a serial console, but: > > 1) From what keyboard does the X take its input once I've > started X from the serial console? > > 2) How do I keep my undisciplined VGA (Diamond 968) from sending > a signal to the monitor until I tell it to? :-) Don't worry about the flickering picture on your screen while the machine is booting. The frequencies are way below the freq's your monitor could grok, so it's simply a matter that you cannot recognize anything. It doesn't hurt anyway. I know several people who are using such a configuration. If you have a serial console (but of course, still a console driver for the graphics console, too), this is where the boot messages will appear, and where you can run a single-user session. You could try using a serial console by entering -h at the boot prompt, or you could enforce it by uncommenting the FORCE_SERIAL_CONSOLE in /sys/i386/boot/biosboot/Makefile, rebuilding and reinstalling your boot blocks, and run disklabel -B to install the new boot blocks. (Note that FORCE_SERIAL_CONSOLE has been broken in 2.0.5; an #if 0 was offset by a few lines.) -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)