PXE Boot - Silent kernel dmesg output

[Brian A. Seklecki]

All:

Has anyone experience a PXE boot problem on amd64 (Dell PowerEdge 850,
1850, DRAC4, DRAC5) where kernel dmesg output is suppressed on VGA
Console?

I've tried kernels, mfsroot, and pxeboot from 6.4-RC2, 6.3-PLX, 7.1-B2
builds.

I've verified stock /boot/device.hints, /defaults/loader.conf,
and /boot/loader.conf are in place on my NFS export.

Here's a slightly ambiguous screenshot:
  http://people.collaborativefusion.com/~seklecki/pxe_lock.jpg


  Note: Its hard to tell, but the spindle has already become a block
        cursor.

We used to see this in early 6.x days and assumed it was a bum bPXE
configuration on the server-side; eventually mfsroot would get loaded
and sysinstall(8) welcome would be the first thing displayed after the
2nd stage boot loader.

Breaking out of the loader reveals: 
  console="vidconsole"

Very very strange...

I'm going to have a look at tcpdump(8) on NFS reads to my export and
determine if it is indeed actually reading loader.conf(5).

However, the system-wide defaults w/o loader.conf + loader.rc +
boot.conf shouldn't prohibit kernel VGA console output.

-- 
Brian A. Seklecki <bseklecki at collaborativefusion.com>
Collaborative Fusion, Inc.





IMPORTANT: This message contains confidential information and is intended only for the individual named. If the reader of this message is not an intended recipient (or the individual responsible for the delivery of this message to an intended recipient), please be advised that any re-use, dissemination, distribution or copying of this message is prohibited. Please notify the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system.