On 11 Aug 2002, grant beattie wrote:

>  I've been rigorously testing installations of 1.6 on i386, and I was
>  able to use the serial console just fine without any of the changes
>  you suggest (I was using 'consdev com0', however, at the bootblock).
>
>  > >The differnce between 'Pc' and 'std.9600' is trivial (8 bit data).
>  > >And any term type difference won't stop you logging in.
>  >
>  > Ok. But console or tty00 should set to 'on' when serial bootblock is
>  > selected, IMHO.
>
>  Does it need to be, or is it just a preference?

Without the console or tty0 on, you fail to get a getty when you boot
multi-user. Though the work-around is simple enough -- boot
single-user and edit "/etc/ttys" -- the default in the head (and 1.6!)
has been to enable a getty on "console" for quite some time, it just
needs to go into NetBSD 1.5.4, and this issue is resolved forever and
for all time (on i386).

Frederick