Date: Mon, 6 Feb 1995 02:18:27 -0500 (EST) From: Wankle Rotary Engine <wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu> To: peter@bonkers.taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Cc: syssgm@devetir.qld.gov.au, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org, jcd@crab.xinside.com Subject: Re: sup: Ok, I'm gonna do it. Message-ID: <199502060718.CAA00787@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu> In-Reply-To: <199502052355.RAA03772@bonkers.taronga.com> from "Peter da Silva" at Feb 5, 95 05:55:56 pm
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They say this Peter da Silva person was kidding when he wrote: > > > While all this is true, give me a break. A cheap crappy VGA card is peanuts. > > It's not the cards, it's the monitors. And why buy an extra monitor for a > throwdown PC you're using for a terminal server or whatever? Right now, the system I'm using for development/testing officially doesn't have a monitor: I 'borrowed' one from the multimedia lab (they have an old Dell 286 that they aren't using at the moment). The VGA vard I'm using was pretty much donated to me by the industrial engineering department (in exchange, I converted a bunch of old Gateway 386 machines they had from NCSA telnet terminals to FreeBSD/Xkernel X-terminals). In other words, had it not been for the kindness of strangers, I wouldn't even *have* a VGA display, which is why I'm also hot to insure that FreeBSD can be used productively without one. I have plenty of SPARC fileservers about with no display hardware in them and SunOS can be installed on all of these on a dumb terminal with no trouble at all. Granted few people will end up forced to install FreeBSD this way, but it would be nice to know that you can. > Heck, now there's serial console boot almost working... how do you install > on a rack mounted system with no monitor at all? Just at the moment, the only thing holding you back is a small bug in syscons that was recently patched: the current snapshot kernel will panic if you attempt to boot from the serial console. You can try to bypass this by disabling syscons with "/kernel -c" but you'll only end up with another panic later when sysinstall tries to write to /dev/ttyv1, which isn't there because you disabled it. The next snapshot should make a pretty good test candidate for this scenario, and I intend to try installing it with a serial port when it comes out. The syscons bug notwithstanding, all you should need to do is unplug your keyboard, attach a dumb terminal to COM1 with a serial cable and a null modem (8N1), then hit the switch. The boot block will detect that your keyboard is unplugged and switch the console to the serial port. This sort of thing is very useful even when configuring machines that do have graphics displays: one trick I do frequently when setting up new SunOS machines is to put the system together in a convenient location (usually in the lab where it's supposed to end up), then connect a serial cable between one of its serial ports and the serial port on another nearby machine that's already up and running. I can then power up the new machine with the keyboard uplugged, go back to my office where I can be nice and comfortable, log into the already running machine over the network, and use C-Kermit to take over the new machine's console by remote control. I can then have the new system's console in an xterm window while I add the new system to the DNS and NIS tables in another xterm -- essentially I can do all the configuration and installation from one machine instead of having to zip back and forth between consoles. It's also helpful for remote debugging: right now I have my FreeBSD system at work connected to the SPARC IPX on my desk, so I can boot it in single-user mode and do all sorts of other evil things to it from home. :) Unfortunately, while just about every PC can be coaxed into booting without a keyboard, not all of them will boot without a display card of some kind being installed. This means that, at the very least, you'll need to stuff some kind of dirt cheap mono display card into the system just to get the darned thing up. It seems that machines with AMI BIOSes are perfectly happy without graphics hardware (provided you set the CMOS configuration correctly) but many others are not. Another thing to consider is that the 'press ALT-F2 to see the debugging messages' trick currently used by sysinstall obviously won't work when you boot from the serial console. If you can get by without the debugging messages (and you should be able to if the all-singing, all-dancing install works correctly :) then this shouldn't be a problem. Luckily, it seems the termcap entry for FreeBSD's console is close enough to vt100 that the sysinstall program behaves correctly when displayed on a real vt100 display (well, it looked okay when I ran it in an xterm window anyway). > VGA X install is way cool, but it seriously increases the minimum > requirements. Right now an install on a 386 with 4M and no monitor should > just about work, right? > Not quite yet, but it's getting there. :) Though I wonder how practical it is to run FreeBSD in only 4 megs these days: I had quite a few problems getting 2.0R onto a 386sx/16MHz system with only 4 megs. The GENERIC kernel on the last snapshot was over a meg in size. The XFree86-3.1 SVGA server is right around 2 megs. I know this doesn't reflect actual memory usage, but still... I've had a hard time using 4 meg 386 systems for anything other than X-terminals these days. This does not bode well for me either, because my home machine is a 386sx/16Mhz system with 4 megs of RAM. I wouldn't mind sticking with 1.1.5.1 for a while, but there's a bug in the VM system somewhere that causes it to consume swap space and never give it back, which forces me to reboot the machine every few days. I figure I'm going to haul it into work one day after 2.1-Release comes out and upgrade it. I only hope I don't go mad trying. -Bill -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~T~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -Bill Paul (212) 854-6020 | System Manager Work: wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu | Center for Telecommunications Research Home: wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu | Columbia University, New York City ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Møøse Illuminati: ignore it and be confused, or join it and be confusing! ~~~~~~~~ FreeBSD 2.1.0-Development #1: Fri Jan 20 14:28:17 EST 1995 ~~~~~~~~~
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