*BSD News Article 65106


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Absolute minimums
Date: 4 Apr 1996 22:25:51 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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References: <4jv5gi$rsh@news.mel.aone.net.au>
Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch)
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adam@aone.com.au (Adam Eberbach) writes:

> I'd like to build the box if possible with no keyboard, monitor, 
> display card or other extras. Can FreeBSD use a serial port as the
> console?

It can.  The most problematic part is to convince your BIOS.  To the
best of my knowledge, only AMI BIOSes can be run without a video card,
all other ones will only beep at you.  Sadly, you always need a video
card to tell your BIOS that it shouldn't care for a video card...

Serial console is easy, but currently hardwired to 9600 Baud.  In
order to make this permanent, you have to rebuild and reinstall your
bootblocks so to always pick the serial console.  Normally, it's the
boot option `-h' that toggles between both consoles.  Refer to the
comments in /sys/i386/boot/biosboot/Makefile.

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)