IPMI serial console

[Paul Mather]

On Feb 21, 2013, at 11:29 PM, Jeremy Chadwick <jdc at koitsu.org> wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 02:22:52PM +1030, Daniel O'Connor wrote:
>> On 22/02/2013, at 12:02, Jeremy Chadwick <jdc at koitsu.org> wrote:
>>>> Hmm I tried putting '-S 115200' in /boot.config and it broke - the boot process didn't run the loader (or kernel).
>>> 
>>> I'll talk a bit about this -- again, sorry for the verbosity.  I'll
>>> explain what I've historically used/done, then speculate a bit about
>>> your IPMI stuff:
>>> 
>>> For me, on systems without IPMI, all I had to do was this (and nothing
>>> else):
>>> 
>>> * Put the following in /boot.config:
>>> 
>>> -S115200 -Dh
>> 
>> 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.
> 
> 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).


I think something did break back at the start of the year that caused /boot.config contents to render the system completely unbootable.  At least that is what happened to me on RELENG_8: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2013-January/071579.html

Bruce A. Mah reports later in the same thread that his happened to him on 8.3-RELEASE.  I don't know if this was fixed.

Cheers,

Paul.