Date: Fri, 22 May 2026 23:13:22 +0100 From: Polarian <polarian@polarian.dev> To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Terminal server with consumer hardware Message-ID: <20260522231322.3a0dbd36@Hydrogen> In-Reply-To: <ahCMovnPJ6qjU9Nx@dragon.home.genyosha.net> References: <20260521233422.001d364f@Hydrogen> <ca6a4d16-9918-4f8d-a198-4f09ff8bba46@dorfdsl.de> <20260522154731.4cad8798@Hydrogen> <ahCMovnPJ6qjU9Nx@dragon.home.genyosha.net>
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Hey, > It's been quite a while since I looked at this, but AFAIK FreeBSD > can't make use of USB serial devices for the system console. The man pages cause some confusion here then, as freebsd.efi(8) explicitly state that if you do not have support for it within your uefi bios, maybe this is just me getting confused. > I.e. there must be an actual serial port, recognized by the bios and > presented to the OS. Something like this, if found: > > $ dmesg | grep ^uart[0-9]: > uart0: <16550 or compatible> port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on > acpi0 uart0: console (115200,n,8,1) Ah so it must be presented by acpi, in which case this requires firmware support within the motherboard full stop. > The most I was able to work out with a USB serial device (e.g. on an > old Intel NUC without a native serial port) was starting a login: > getty on ttyU*, but that's only a terminal, not a system console. Yeah this is pretty easy to do, this is what im doing currently, but it doesn't help with a FDE encrypted server. I am starting to think FDE encrypted servers are too much hassle, but then again they provide good security when it comes to physical security of data at rest. The man page still doesn't make sense on this though. I wonder who would be a good person to ask about it, because if it isn't possible then surely the man page needs improvements for being misleading or not clear enough for idiots like me :p Thank you, -- Polarian Jabber/XMPP: polarian@icebound.devhome | help
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