On 17-Jul-06, at 2:06 PM, J.D. Bronson wrote:
> I have set this up 1/2 way...I see the machine start to boot and  
> then nothing until the login prompt...so I know my serial is setup  
> right...but I need to somehow tell the machine to display things  
> over the serial line while booting and not the VGA...
>
> There seems no 'boot.conf' like in openbsd..so what am I missing?


When you say "start to boot", you're going to have to be just a  
little more forthcoming... You mean you see BIOS output but not  
bootblock output?  Or you see bootblock output but no kernel messages?

Generally, if you're seeing BIOS output and bootblock output but no  
kernel output, it's because you've enabled BIOS serial port  
redirection but you didn't give installboot the "-o console=com0"  
option.

The bootblocks use BIOS functions to do I/O.  The kernel speaks to  
devices directly.  The BIOS tells the kernel what device to use as  
its console.