On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 09:36:25PM +1000, Joel Sing wrote: > On Sat, 20 Jul 2013, Erling Westenvik wrote: > > On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 01:16:44PM -0400, Kenneth R Westerback wrote: > > > On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 06:15:49PM +0200, Erling Westenvik wrote: > > > > Maybe a stupid question, but is it possible to have a i386 machine > > > > configured with FDE to automatically direct to serial console BEFORE > > > > the passphrase prompt? > > > > > > > > The steps below require the machine to have an attached keyboard > > > > and monitor initially. > > > > > > > > If I hit Enter at the passphrase prompt, the boot prompt will > > > > > > > > appear and let me switch to serial console: > > > > > set tty com0 > > > > > > > > From the serial console I can the type: > > > > > boot sr0a:/bsd > > > > > > > > which gives me the passphrase prompt again on the console machine. > > > > > > > > It would be really nice to be able to boot a headless FDE. Am I missing > > > > something? Is this design by intention? > > > > > > > > Cheers, > > > > > > > > Erling > > > > > > There's always boot.conf(5), into which you can put 'set tty com0' last > > > I checked. > > > > Of course, but not on an fully encrypted disk where root, and hence > > /etc/boot.conf, won't get available until the passphrase is entered. > > > > Since it is possible to exit the passphrase prompt, enter "set tty com0" > > at the boot(8) prompt and then go back to the passphrase prompt again > > from serial console, it must be possible to compile this functionality > > into boot(8)? (I'm really way out of my league here..) > > This can be easily achieved by creating a tiny 'a' partition, which contains > nothing but an /etc/boot.conf file with: > > set tty com0 > boot sr0a:/bsd > > That way once boot(8) loads, it reads hd0a:/etc/boot.conf, then switches to > serial and starts booting from the encrypted softraid volume.
Tested and working. Perhaps not the most elegant solution but it gets the job done. Thanks a lot! > Otherwise you could use a modified boot(8), which defaulted to serial - see > constab in sys/arch/i386/stand/boot/conf.c for example. I'd love to try this but downloading the source and having a look at the file you mentioned, didn't get me very far. Can I ask you to elaborate?
