[ On Saturday, January 29, 2000 at 11:53:43 (-0500), Allen Briggs wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: serial console HOWTO?
>
> This, or something like it, is what I've been thinking about (and trying
> to find a problem with).  I don't know that we need to go as far as a
> variable list to fix the problem at hand.  I'd at least like to see the
> following options:
> 
> 	1) Always boot with VGA/kbd console
> 	2) Always boot with serial console
> 	3) Autoselect console

Those three are OK with me so long as #3 works in the "Sun way" by
defaulting to the keyboard only if one is attached and otherwise
selecting the first working BIOS serial port.  :-)

> Probably with #1 as the default setting (set at build-time from an
> environment variable that could be overridden in /etc/mk.conf) and
> with a tool for changing the behavior.  So, I could install NetBSD 1.5
> from a stock CD-ROM, then run a utility to force it to always use a
> serial console.  I could also set up my local tree so that when I build
> the boot blocks, I always get that behavior by default.

I'm not so sure I like the idea of having the default scheme
compile-time selectable.  I can't think of any valid reason to do this
if there's adequate run-time control.  My own experience with trying to
manage such compile-time and run-time options, both in this specific
example of boot configuration, but also in many other wider contexts, is
that they are not managable.  People doing the run-time configuration
will make assumptions about what the default behaviour is and those
assumptions will be wrong at times if you provide an easy compile-time
knob to change the default.  The default behaviour should be well
defined and widely understood and "hard" to change.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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