On 19-Oct-08, at 8:23 PM, Jorgen Lundman wrote:
Netbsd-4.0.1 i386.
Don't you just hate the ignorance of i386 BIOS vendors w.r.t. serial consoles?
Would it be complicated to take the install CD and changing the bootblock to be able to use serial console. Either console=com0 or console=com0kbd?
In fact in the standard release there are ISO images included one of which has boot blocks set to use the serial console:
$RELEASEDIR/i386/installation/cdrom/boot-com.iso
With relatively few changes I added a "boot-com0kbd.iso" and a "boot-
auto.iso" to the build. Basically you just have to add SUBDIR entries
to src/distrib/i386/cdroms/Makefile and then create the new
corresponding directories with copies of src/distrib/i386/cdroms/
bootcd-com/Makefile with appropriate changes.
However those are all just tiny bootable images though without the binary sets in it so they can only be used for booting, thus your second question:
The boot kernel-only images does not even have "mount" so I can't mount a HDD (nor am I local to the server to change CD).
I've had a note on my ToDo list to make a full release ISO with serial boot blocks (I did the same in the 1.6 days). IIUC though there's a bit more make machinery to jiggle now though to manage creation of multiple installcd images.
Hmmm.... or maybe it's not -- just add yet more SUBDIR entries to the same src/distrib/i386/cdroms/Makefile as above and corresponding directories with modified copies of src/distrib/i386/cdroms/installcd (e.g. add the desired CDBOOTOPTIONS setting). I'm going to try that now.
(Of course if you don't care to build the "normal" kbd console version of the installcd and you only want to build a modified installcd with boot blocks for a serial console then you only need to add the appropriate CDBOOTOPTIONS setting to src/distrib/i386/cdroms/installcd/ Makefile and make a release.)
--
Greg A. Woods; Planix, Inc.
<woods%planix.ca@localhost>
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