*BSD News Article 49131


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From: j@bonnie.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Booting up via serial port
Date: 23 Aug 1995 14:45:31 +0200
Organization: Private U**x site, Dresden.
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References: <41bmal$3el@raffles.technet.sg> <41c7f5$qj5@reason.cdrom.com>
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Jordan K. Hubbard <jkh@FreeBSD.org> wrote:

>No problem.  You can boot with the -h flag to use the serial console,
>and just as soon as we re-enable it by default (there were some teething
>problems that made it hose some people's keyboards, so we didn't do so
>for 2.0.5) it will drop to a serial console in the absence of a VGA card
>automatically.  In the meantime, you can rebuild the bootblocks in
>/sys/i386/boot/biosboot with FORCE_COMCONSOLE on (see the Makefile) to
>make your particular system do so.

Unfortunately, Jordan's :) hack that disabled the keyboard probe (due
to the problems mentioned) has been too gross and removed part of the
FORCE_COMCONSOLE code, too.  So you have to apply a small patch to the
file sys/i386/boot/biosboot/boot.c.  If you are familiar with C,
you'll find this yourself, otherwise drop me a mail.

(This is for 2.0.5, it has been fixed in 2.2-current, and i hope the
fix will make it into 2.1; it's already in the queue.)
-- 
cheers, J"org                      private:   joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de
                                   http://www.sax.de/~joerg/

Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)