Re: Dual Consoles: Is there any way to have the output of startup scripts to go to both?

On Tue, Aug 16, 2022 at 11:34 AM Dan Mahoney <freebsd@gushi.org> wrote:
>
> Hey there all,
>
> At the day job we have dell idrac machines that also do serial consoles (this is super convenient because you can get a serial console by ssh'ing to the idrac), instead of firing up a browser and a VPN (and, earlier, Java...eww).
>
> So naturally, in /boot/loader.conf we set console=comconsole,vidconsole.
>
> We get dmesg output out both consoles.  We ultimately wind up with a login prompt on both consoles, but the output of boot scripts only go to one, and if the system craps the bed and drops to single-user mode, one console just "hangs" and the other one gives you useful output.
>
> It feels pretty trivial to have /etc/rc detect this unique condition, and perhaps put *some* output out to the inactive console, even if it's not capable of letting you do something interactive like an fsck from both.  Just something that hints "hey, go check the other line, there's things happening over there".
>
> How hard would this be?
>

I have some WIP that will scattershot console output to all configured
consoles, but right now there's not really a way to configure userland
output to go to non-primary consoles.