At 07:29 AM 11/4/2005 -0500, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
>In message <6.2.3.4.2.20051104041334.0a832b80@127.0.0.1>, Terry Moore writes:
> >Background: we have a failing machine, that needs to be swapped out
> >right away.  We went to BestBuy and purchased the lowest-end machine
> >in stock (a strategy that has always worked very well for us in the
> >10 years we've been using NetBSD):  Amd Athlon64 3300+ (2.2GHz),
> >512MB DDR, 512KB L2.
> >
> >For various reasons, we want to run an i386 kernel on this
> >box.  However, both 1.6.1 and 2.1 install kernels fail with:
> >
> >"kbc: cmd word write error"
> >
> >and later
> >
> >"no /dev/console"
> >
> >and when menu comes up to choose what to install, etc., keyboard is
> >no-op and we're dead.
> >
> >It boots the supplied WinXP from HD fine and keyboard works fine.  We
> >therefore do not suspect the hardware is busted.
> >
> >We don't have a dmesg output -- can't write that fast, and there's no
> >great way to get the output to a file without a keyboard.
> >
>
>Can you set up a serial console on it, running to another machine?

Possibly -- at the moment, I don't know if the machine has a serial 
port.  (I'm out of town, helping one of my colleagues, Roy Flacco, 
who's actually looking at the problem.)  But since it has a PS/2 
port, I guess there's hope of a real serial port.

The install kernel doesn't actually support serial console, does 
it?  What will be the easiest way to prepare a test kernel for this 
situation?  I suppose we can create a bootable external drive of some 
kind, or carry the hard drive to another system and do the first 
stage of the install there.

Thanks,
--Terry