Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2000 18:34:03 -0500 From: Alan Edmonds <aedmonds@digitalconvergence.com> To: Mike Smith <msmith@freebsd.org>, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: PXE (pxeboot) and serial consoles - force it! Message-ID: <396A5D6B.BFFF396F@digitalconvergence.com> References: <200007102329.QAA07584@mass.osd.bsdi.com>
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Mike Smith wrote: > > > Restating the question. > > > > Is there a way to force PXE to > > I think you have some very serious confusion about what things are and > what they are called, and it is making it impossible for anyone else to > understand what you're talking about. > > "PXE" is a specification, and an interface compliant with that > specification. > > "PXE boot ROM" is code which implements the "PXE" interface in order to > boot your system and support other boot programs. > > "pxeboot" is a program loaded by the "PXE boot ROM" as part of the boot > process. It is the same as the "loader" in the boot-from-disk case. Yes, I understand this although my question didn't state that. I should have said 'in the case of booting over the network with the PXE client in the NIC ROM and using pxeboot as the third stage boot loader.' > > 1) not probe for a console > > Nothing probes for a console, apart from boot2 in the boot-from-disk case > if the -P flag is found in /boot.config. Okay. Maybe I used the word probe incorrectly. As I understand pxeboot (and loader(8)), in the case of an unspecified console, it searches for a console. It first looks for the internal video/keyboard (vidconsole) and then for COMCONSOLE. It uses the first one it finds. > > 2) use a serial port as the default com port > > I think you mean "use a serial port as the console". You can build > "pxeboot" without keyboard/video support by commenting out the vidconsole > entry in the definition of the consoles array in > sys/boot/i386/loader/conf.c You are right, I meant console. I need to proofread a bit. I've been stuck deep in the code and fresh air screws up my head. I've done that and that solves the problem. However, it's a bit of a kludge in my book. > > > I know I can put set console="comconsole" in /boot/loader.rc. > > Normally, this is set in the boot blocks, but we don't > > have these in pxeboot. > > Actually, you will find that if you have correctly configured your PXE > environment, "pxeboot" will correctly find and parse /boot/loader.rc, and > this is the preferred mechanism for enabling serial console output in the > PXE environment. Except if pxeboot can't read loader.rc you could be hosed. Since pxeboot is loaded over the network, you might not be able to mount the root fs and read /boot/loader.rc. I was just trying to set the default case to assume serial console like you can with boot[012]. Thanks for the clarifications. -- Alan Edmonds Director of International Technology DigitalConvergence.:Com aedmonds@digitalconvergence.com Phone: +1-214-292-6040 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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