Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 16:44:24 -0800 (PST) From: Douglas Ambrisko <ambrisko@tcs.com> To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de Cc: freebsd-current@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: COMCONSOLE: a patch and a problem Message-ID: <199603130044.QAA07753@cozumel.tcs.com> In-Reply-To: <199603122216.XAA05836@uriah.heep.sax.de> from "J Wunsch" at Mar 12, 96 11:16:27 pm
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J Wunsch writes: | | As Douglas Ambrisko wrote: | | > I'll also take a look at syscons and see why it should | > be different. | | syscons uses a different tty structure for the console than for VT1. I guess my question is why? and why can't they be made compatible. The issue here is that we can't really have a getty on com1 and ttyv0 since this would upset a mouse on com1. I feel if we can't do this then we have no hope for a system that we can easily switch between serial console and graphics console mode without major work. This also implies that installing a system through a serial console is also partially doomed since it would mean tracking another set of boot blocks etc. during the install phase and another boot floppy. Also it is important that part of the structure for the serial console and graphics console is different or flagged so the graphics ioctl check will fail to detect whether or not the console is a serial port or graphics console. This code is used in sysinstall. I have to admit all that I have tried was vi, shell and X. | > the last boot mode. This way you can boot -h to get the serial port and -g | > to get the graphics console and the kernel would remember that for the | > next boot. | | By now, -h is a toggle (btw.). | | Most people would hesitate if you always write back the boot block, | just to store a single bit in it. Well, van Gilluwe reports bit 2 of | the so-called ``equipment byte'' in the CMOS (offset 0x14) as | `unused'. Perhaps we could use it to store the serial console flag | there? :) Yep that's why I suggested to save the boot mode in the kernel like what happens when you boot -c and modify the kernel. Right now I don't know what would be involved to do that. Doug A.
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