Trouble getting serial support for "Live CD" in 9 installer

Garrett Cooper yanegomi at gmail.com
Wed Nov 23 20:03:35 UTC 2011


On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 11:12 AM, Adam McDougall <mcdouga9 at egr.msu.edu> wrote:
> I often use the serial console on my servers through ILOM remote console
> access to install FreeBSD because it lets me cut and paste commands into a
> live shell from install media.  Back with FreeBSD 8.x and previous, the
> console worked as a dual console between the redirected VGA/keyboard console
> and serial, all I had to do was drop to the loader prompt at the boot loader
> menu to enter:
>
> set console=comconsole
> set boot_serial=yes
> boot
>
> From then on, the VGA console was ignored until I rebooted.  But in 9.x
> (currently trying 9.0-RC2 from the usb image), I have to interrupt an
> earlier loader to use -h or -D to enable serial(dual) console support at
> all.  I then enter the two variables above as I usually do, then specify my
> terminal type (xterm), then choose "Live CD" which prints:
> Updating motd: /etc/motd is not writable, update failed.
> Configuring syscons: blanktime.
> Starting cron.
> Starting background file system checks in 60 seconds.
>
> Wed Nov 23 19:03:02 UTC 2011
>
> but then it prints the FreeBSD banner and spawns the login: prompt on the
> VGA console instead.
>
> Is there something else I can set during the boot process to make this work?
>  I could try modifying the configuration on the usb image to suit my site
> but this is more modification than I required in the past and surprisingly
> different.  Please let me know if I can provide more information or help in
> some way.  Thanks.
>
> If I don't hear back in a few days or so, I'll make a PR.

You'll need to change your device.hints and /etc/ttys.
-Garrett


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