Serial console install

[Gavin Atkinson]

On Thu, 2005-04-07 at 13:48 +0200, Marian Hettwer wrote:
> On Do, 7.04.2005, 13:23, Eric Anderson sagte:
> > Sławek Żak wrote:
> >> I'd like to ask what's the reason behind requiring a keyboard during
> >> FreeBSD install. Headless configuration is the most common in
> >> datacenters and toying with KVM and VGA cable is often a no-no
> >> (distance in the issue my case).
> >>
> > Maybe so, but then people who do have video consoles plugged in would have
> > to hit a key to keep going.
> >
> Isn't it possible to send out the output of FreeBSD's bootloader to VGA
> and serial console ?
> This would be perfect. We could have a point in our bootmenu to hit a
> specific key for serial console install, or for VGA based install.
> But I believe for the time being it's not possible to have the same output
> on console and vga.

See the patch associated with PR kern/66425 - which basically makes the
-D dual-console support work.

I've been using it on all my machines now for about a year without
problems.  When I first floated the idea there were a lot of people who
wanted this support, but since writing it there's been very little
interest in incorporating it into the tree :(

Not that any of this helps your need at the moment, but hopefully it'll
stop you from having to write any code yourself :)

Gavin