FreeBSD, Intel Motherboards and Portmaster Serial Console - How?

[Robert Watson]

On Fri, 19 Nov 2004, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

> I just picked up a PM25 for our colo facility, so that I can do remote
> admin on the FreeBSD boxes ... our two Tyan servers are a piece of cake,
> as they have DB9 Serial, like I'd expect ... but the Intel motherboards
> have "External RJ45 serial, internal serial header" on all of there
> boards, from what I can tell ... but what I can't figure out is how to
> make use of them ... 

Not sure where the previous post was CC'd to per se, but take a look here:

    http://www.watson.org/~robert/freebsd/portmaster25/

A couple of other comments:

- Some Intel motherboards include BIOS revisions that have errors
  regarding the configuration, or at least, are incomprehensible.  We had
  to futz for quite a long time to get it working for the netperf cluster.
  Unfortunately, I seem to have misplaced the instructions -- I can only
  advise trying counter-intuitive things.  I think the problem was that
  the BIOS was referring to 1/2 and meant A/B, or said A/B and meant 1/2.

- On some motherboards, the RTS/CTS seems to flip too frequently for the
  Portmaster 25, which detects this as a wiring problem.  I had to turn
  off flow control on the port, set "hangup off".  Otherwise, I saw the
  serial console disconnect a few seconds whenever the test started moving
  fast.

Robert N M Watson             FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Projects
robert at fledge.watson.org      Principal Research Scientist, McAfee Research

> 
> The servers are remote, so adding a 9pin serial port onto the 'internal 
> header' is a bit difficult, so am wondering about using the 'external 
> RJ45'.  The PM25 cables end in an RJ45 jack, and we had to purchase 
> adapters to go from RJ45->9pin ... can those RJ45 adapters be used to plug 
> into the RJ45 serial directly?
> 
> Also, from what I've been able to read so far, the RJ45 == Serial B, not 
> Serial A ... so, I'd need to change how FreeBSD works as far as serial 
> console is concerned, to look at Serial B, no?
> 
> Help?
> 
> Thanks ...
> 
> 
> ----
> Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
> Email: scrappy at hub.org           Yahoo!: yscrappy              ICQ: 7615664
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-questions at freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
>