FreeBSD, Intel Motherboards and Portmaster Serial Console - How?

[Samuel Clements]

Okay - I'm terribly sorry for replying to myself *again* but to answer your 
first question of redirection kernel messages to COMB (or 2 or whatever), 
the docs say:

20.6.5.2 Using Serial Port Other Than sio0 for the Console
Using a port other than sio0 as the console requires some recompiling. If 
you want to use another serial port for whatever reasons, recompile the boot 
blocks, the boot loader and the kernel as follows.

  1.. Get the kernel source. (See Chapter 19)

  2.. Edit /etc/make.conf and set BOOT_COMCONSOLE_PORT to the address of the 
port you want to use (0x3F8, 0x2F8, 0x3E8 or 0x2E8). Only sio0 through sio3 
(COM1 through COM4) can be used; multiport serial cards will not work. No 
interrupt setting is needed.

  3.. Create a custom kernel configuration file and add appropriate flags 
for the serial port you want to use. For example, if you want to make sio1 
(COM2) the console:

device sio1 at isa? port IO_COM2 flags 0x10 irq 3
or

device sio1 at isa? port IO_COM2 flags 0x30 irq 3
The console flags for the other serial ports should not be set.

  4.. Recompile and install the boot blocks and the boot loader:

# cd /sys/boot
# make clean
# make
# make install
5.. Rebuild and install the kernel.

  6.. Write the boot blocks to the boot disk with disklabel(8) and boot from 
the new kernel.



So, set that to COMB and setup all the BIOS stuff to happen on COMB (note 
that the COMB and COM2 are the same thing - Intel had to confuse things just 
a tad more than they already are...) and you should be good to go!

  -Sam


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Samuel Clements" <sclements at linkline.com>
To: "Samuel Clements" <sclements at linkline.com>; "Marc G. Fournier" 
<scrappy at hub.org>
Cc: <freebsd-questions at freebsd.org>; <freebsd-hardware at freebsd.org>
Sent: Monday, November 22, 2004 9:55 AM
Subject: Re: FreeBSD, Intel Motherboards and Portmaster Serial Console - 
How?


> *sigh* I was wrong. This setup will get you to the
> Hit [Enter] to boot immediately, or any other key for command prompt.
>
> but getting into the BIOS over the serial connection will most definatly 
> work.
>  Sorry about that.
>  -Sam
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Samuel Clements" <sclements at linkline.com>
> To: "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy at hub.org>
> Cc: <freebsd-questions at freebsd.org>; <freebsd-hardware at freebsd.org>
> Sent: Monday, November 22, 2004 9:30 AM
> Subject: Re: FreeBSD, Intel Motherboards and Portmaster Serial Console - 
> How?
>
>
>>> Oh, most cool .. so I wouldn't even be using FreeBSDs serial console, 
>>> but doing it at the hardware level?  By 'watching POST', would this also 
>>> give me remot access to the BIOS itself?
>>
>> In theory, yes and yes, most definatly!
>>  -Sam
>