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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!corn.cso.niu.edu!woodward From: woodward@cs.niu.edu () Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Serial Console Date: 20 Dec 1996 20:58:01 GMT Organization: Lachman Technology, Inc., Naperville, IL Lines: 43 Message-ID: <59eukp$a46@corn.cso.niu.edu> References: <32b807eb.0@news.fast.net.uk> Reply-To: woodward@lachman.com NNTP-Posting-Host: max.cs.niu.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:32917 Sean B Purdy (sean@neptune.fast.net.uk) wrote: : Hi, : I'm trying to get FreeBSD to use a serial console when booting. This : works fine as long as you press -h at the PC terminal first. : Unfortunately, next time you boot, it forgets about the -h and boots on : the PC console instead of the serial console. : As I'm trying to hook the serial console up to a terminal server, this is : somewhat of a disadvantage. I think you have to fiddle with the : bootblocks to get it to do this properly - anybody have any ideas? : Thanks, : Sean the traditional way something like this is done is by writing something to battery-backed-up CMOS or something non-volotile like it. since PC's don't have the best BIOS in the world for unix OS's, de facto support doesn't exist here. so... you'd have to either hard-code the kernel to do this, or set a flag in the file system somewhere which would be inspected by the bootup code, either by the kernel or by something in an rc-type file. if there's something someone can toggle to do this, then perhaps someone might speak up and say something about it. lacking that - then the first place *i'd* look would be the configuration file and friends - our friends in BSD-land may already have a configuration option to build a kernel with default serial-line consoles. ( it would be a neat thing to have, anyway ) lacking *that* ... then ... one of the nice things aout FreeBSD is that it comes with the source code. "Use the force, Luke! Read the Source!". take a look at what processing is invoked with the -h switch; in a worse case scenario you could probably hard hack the boottime code to do whatever it is that is done by the '-h' keystroke sequence - perhaps a utility one could use in one of the 'rc' files could be created. if you do this, a posting of same for everyone's benefit would be A Good Thing. woodward@lachman.com ( don't write me at niu.edu - it'll bounce )