From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jan 29 08:39:54 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A003A16A420 for ; Sun, 29 Jan 2006 08:39:54 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from freebsd-questions@m.gmane.org) Received: from ciao.gmane.org (main.gmane.org [80.91.229.2]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2E94B43D49 for ; Sun, 29 Jan 2006 08:39:53 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from freebsd-questions@m.gmane.org) Received: from list by ciao.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.43) id 1F3869-0007Sg-6v for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Sun, 29 Jan 2006 09:39:49 +0100 Received: from 69-171-193-20.sbtnvt.adelphia.net ([69.171.193.20]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Sun, 29 Jan 2006 09:39:49 +0100 Received: from scott by 69-171-193-20.sbtnvt.adelphia.net with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Sun, 29 Jan 2006 09:39:49 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org From: "Scott I. Remick" Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 03:39:42 -0500 Lines: 21 Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: 69-171-193-20.sbtnvt.adelphia.net User-Agent: Pan/0.14.2.91 (As She Crawled Across the Table) X-Archive: encrypt Sender: news Subject: serial console for dummies? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 08:39:54 -0000 Hello... I'm trying to set up a serial console for watching console error messages while in X, but am having a real hard time getting my head around the concepts of what I need to do (and don't need to). I've seen http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/serialconsole-setup.html but I'm not clear about how much of that applies to what I want to do, since it talks about setting it up for a headless system (no keyboard or monitor) and actually instructs you to remove the keyboard. I've also searched the mailing list archives but I've read a lot of conflicting info, much of which for different uses of the serial console than what I want to use it for, and I've now read back so far that I can't even be certain that the suggestions apply to FreeBSD 6.0. Ugh So is there someone who can give me a hand-held walk-through of just what I need to do to make this work? I'm running FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE and live in X (Gnome) all the time. My intention here is to be able to see console messages (Errors) so when something dies (like X locking, which happens sometimes) I have a chance to see what the heck happened. I have an old 486 laptop I intend to use as the "dumb terminal", as well as the necessary null modem cable. I just need to know what to configure on my FreeBSD box so that console errors are mirrored to the serial port. Thanks!