>    I looked in dev/cons.c and it appears that the console is supposed to
>    work even if there isn't a console.  

cons.c attempts to make it work. The problem appears to be with the
ioctl() function -- something at bootup is doing an ioctl() I think
and that's when we hang.

I noticed this a few months ago but couldn't figure out how to track
it down (if you don't have a console... how do you debug it?)

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