*BSD News Article 85443


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Serial Console
Date: 23 Dec 1996 22:39:00 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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sean@neptune.fast.net.uk (Sean B Purdy) wrote:

> 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.  

Two options:

There's rudimentary code to make the bootblocks find out about whether
your keyboard is connected or not, and boot on the serial console if
it's absent.  If i'm not very mistaken, -DPROBE_KEYBOARD will enable
it (see below).

If this fails to detect the existance of your keyboard reliably (which
unfortunately often happens with all that crappy PC hardware around),
you can force the bootblocks to always prefer the serial console with
-DFORCE_COMCONSOLE.

Both of the above Makefile switches are available in the bootblocks
Makefile, /sys/i386/boot/biosboot/Makefile.  Once you've edited that
file, remake and reinstall the bootblocks.  Then, run

	disklabel -B sd0

to install the new bootblocks on sd0.

(Recent systems allow to override the Makefile switches with
configuration options in /etc/make.conf.)

-- 
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. ;-)