hw.vga.textmode=1 and the installation media

[Michelle Sullivan]

Eugene M. Zheganin wrote:
> Hi,
>
> would be really nice if the 11.2 and subsequent versions would come 
> with the hw.vga.textmode=1 as the default in the installation media. 
> Because you know, there's a problem with some vendors (like HP) who's 
> servers are incapable of showing graphics in IPMI with the default 
> hw.vga.textmode=0 (yeah, I'm aware that most of the vendors don't have 
> this issue), and there's still a bug that prevents this from being set 
> from a loader prompt - USB keyboard doesn't work at least in 11.0 
> there (seems to be some sort of FreeBSD "holy cow", along with sshd 
> starting last, after all the local daemons. I would ask again to fix 
> the latter as I did last years, but it really seems to be a 
> cornerstone which the FreeBSD is built upon).

Yeah the USB 'bug' has been there since FreeBSD 7/8.x I have a couple of 
loader command that make it work again... will let you know later when 
my container arrives (next week) as the details are stored on the HP 
blades (being transported.)  It also breaks most/all of the Softlayer 
consoles since 8.3(ish) - didn't manage to completely fix this as had no 
bios access to ensure the USB is in the correct mode.

Of course don't forget that the older iLO based HP servers also have 
these problems - except if you pay the license fee for the advanced iLO 
support that supports graphics mode... as well as 2 cursor mode (what 
the f*** would anyone want 2 cursors on a console for anyhow?... never 
worked that out.)

Michelle