Serial console problems with stable/8

[Oliver Fromme]

Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
 > Is there a PS/2 keyboard hooked up to this machine when you're
 > attempting to get serial console output?

Kind of.  It's connected to a local KVM switch.

 > If so, I'm not too surprised it doesn't work (re: -P flag).

If -P is not supposed to activate the serial console, then
the boot.config(5) manpage is in urgent need of a fix.
Quote:

 >  The command:
 >
 >       # echo "-P" > /boot.config
 >
 >  will activate the serial console of FreeBSD.

Also, with that flag it has worked fine for ages, until
I updated to 8.1-stable.  There must be a regression
somewhere.

 > Can you try the following?
 > 
 > 1) Removing kernel_options and console from loader.conf
 > 2) Place "-P" in /boot.config instead
 > 
 > If this doesn't change the behaviour, please replace -P and with -D -h
 > and see if there's any improvement.

I already have tried all kinds of different combinations
when I sat in front of the box yesterday.  I'm not sure
if I have tried the exact combination that you suggest,
though.  I also don't understand why those changes should
improve anything.

Anyway, I will try next time I'm near the machine (it's 
a three hours ride) which will probably be on Friday.
If it won't work then I'll downgrade it to 7.1 the same
day.

BTW, the interesting thing is that all processes that try
to access the console hang in "ttydcd".  I'm not familiar
with the tty code ...  Does anyone have an idea what this
means?

Best regards
   Oliver

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