misc/106091: Keyboard disabled at mountroot> prompt

[Kris Kennaway]

On Mon, Dec 04, 2006 at 03:07:00PM -0800, Jed Donnelley wrote:
> At 09:28 AM 12/4/2006, Kris Kennaway <kris at obsecurity.org> wrote:
> >On Fri, Dec 01, 2006 at 02:30:17AM +0000, Kris Kennaway 
> ><kris at obsecurity.org> wrote:
> >> The following reply was made to PR misc/106091; it has been noted by 
> >GNATS.
> >>
> >> From: Jed Donnelley <jed at nersc.gov>
> >> To: Ruslan Ermilov <ru at FreeBSD.org>
> >> Cc: bug-followup at FreeBSD.org
> >> Subject: Re: misc/106091: Keyboard disabled at mountroot> prompt
> >> Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 18:23:39 -0800
> >>
> >>  At 06:17 PM 11/30/2006, Ruslan Ermilov <ru at FreeBSD.org>  wrote:
> >>  >On Thu, Nov 30, 2006 at 08:42:48PM +0000, Jed Donnelley wrote:
> >>  > > In the process of setting up a gmirror I messed up my fstab.
> >>  > > When the boot process couldn't find a / to mount it dropped to the:
> >>  > >
> >>  > > mountroot>
> >>  > >
> >>  > > prompt.  However, I found at that point that keyboard input was not
> >>  > > accepted.  I ended up having to start a system from a CD in "rescue"
> >>  > > mode, mount the / file system from the hard drive and edit 
> >/etc/fstab
> >>  > > that way.
> >>  >
> >>  >Was it observed over a serial console?
> >>
> >>  No, KVM.  Is there some reason that facility is only available over
> >>  a serial console?  The output displayed properly on the monitor
> >>  and of course with a proper boot off a CD or HD the keyboard input
> >>  worked properly.
> >>
> >>  Thanks for considering this problem.
> >
> >No, but it's known that on a serial console input at the mountroot
> >prompt is mostly ignored (i.e. if you press the key enough times it
> >eventually does get accepted).  This wouldn't apply to a KVM though.
> >
> >Does the keyboard work in the boot loader?  i.e. if you tell the boot
> >menu to escape to the loader.  If not, it's something about your KVM
> >that is the problem.
> 
> The keyboard and display work fine in the boot loader - from the boot
> prompt (before the mountroot> prompt), from the CD (whether in rescue
> mode or when I was initially building the system) and of course from the
> running system both before and after I corrected the fstab problem.
> 
> I believe testing this problem is as simple as building a system (or even
> using an existing system) and commenting out the / entry in the fstab.
> Then reboot.  After the system fails to come back up and presumably
> waits in the mountroot> prompt, can you interact with it using the keyboard?

Yes, if I'm using a real keyboard.

> I just did another test of such a change on another system with a distinct
> KVM configuration and different hardware.  The behavior was the same.  I
> did notice that if I booted in SafeMode then I was able to use the keyboard
> to mount the root file system (e.g. mountroot> ufs:/dev/mirror/gm0s1a ).
> That's a helpful work around.

OK, that's probably relevant but I don't know how.

Kris