IPMI serial console

[Daniel O'Connor]

On 22/02/2013, at 14:59, Jeremy Chadwick <jdc at koitsu.org> wrote:
>> This breaks the boot for me, boot.config has to contain more than just
>> flags it seems. In any case I believe setting boot_multicons and
>> boot_serial is the same as -Dh. Not sure about the baud rate though.
> 
> Then someone broke something (parser or something else).  This has
> always, *always* worked (just flags).  The last time I verified it was
> with the release of 9.0-RELEASE.  I do have a system I could test this
> on, but I'd need to find a null modem cable first.

Weird, this is 9.1 - I wouldn't expect any changes..

> I have seen some MFCs that touch those bits in the bootloader, but from
> my memory it didn't touch anything other than supporting /boot/config as
> an alternate location to the classic /boot.config file.  I would be very
> surprised if this broke it.
> 
> I can assure you that those were the only flags that were needed, and in
> exactly that syntax.  Even the Handbook has this in it, as well as
> boot(8).
> 
> I believe your explanation of boot_multicons and boot_serial are correct
> and do correlate with -D and -h.  I could look at the bootstrap code to
> verify.  The options are described in loader(8) but not loader.conf(5).
> 
> The drawback to using the /boot/loader.conf variables is that you won't
> get boot2 output because loader is what reads /boot/loader.conf, not
> boot2.  Thus you lose the ability to deal with the system via serial at
> the boot2 stage.  For me, this has always been a deal-breaker.  This is
> why I always advocate /boot.config.  (Note to readers: if I'm wrong
> about this, please correct me, and point me to the relevant code)

Ah that is a fair point.

>> BOOT_COMCONSOLE_SPEED=115200  BOOT_COMCONSOLE_PORT=0x3e8 and now the
>> loader talks to me without VGA to serial redirection.
> 
> Huzzah!  Do you get output from the kernel now, or still just bootstraps
> and loader, then silence until getty runs?

Sadly no, I just the loader then getty.

>> I assumed that the separate NIC was to avoid this problem, however I
>> have since found that the default on the SM boards I looked at is to
>> use the dedicated port otherwise share(!). So the worst of both
>> worlds, hooray!
> 
> Depends on the board and the IPMI integration.  Most of the newer boards
> (past 3-4 years) I've seen have a dedicated LAN port on their IPMI
> add-on board; e.g. a dual-NIC motherboard has 2 NICs, then there's a 3rd
> NIC on the IPMI card/port.  I have seen the shared ones though, and
> that's where the ASF stuff comes into play (ugh ugh ugh).  I've always
> avoided all the boards that have "on-board" IPMI of any sort.

I have boards with 3 RJ45 ports, 1 IPMI & 2 normal (em devices). The IMPI configuration has an option to use the dedicated port only, try that first then on failure share em0, or share em0 only.

The default is try the dedicate port then if that fails share em0 :(

--
Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer
for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au
"The nice thing about standards is that there
are so many of them to choose from."
  -- Andrew Tanenbaum
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