Hi Dima, First of all, let me say how helpful I have found your input on this. oComments interspersed below:
You wrote: > > Hello, Steve, > > As a person which have lot of serial consoles (NetBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris, > Linux) working on very different platforms (Sun, IBM, HP) I can add > something: . . > > 2. Can you tell us why installboot way do not work for you? I wish I could. What I have found is that it is necessary to drop out of the install system after partitioning and do an installboot -f on /dev/wd0a to get the system to boot at all. I have not been able to discover why using " - o console=com0 " fails to work, nor why "consdev=com0" in boot.cfg does not work whereas adding "consdev com0" to tje command section of individual boot.cfg menu items does. I have wondered if the man page is out of step with the state of the software in a way that those very familiar with the process would not necessarily notice. > > 3. 115200 vs 9600 is really helps, mostly when you manage file systems > and lot of kernel output. I never set speed less than 115200. Some of the Fujitsu on-screen prompts say it must be 38400. Not so. > > 4. All this process is frustrating only first times when you are > understanding all the logic in this piece of software. After some > experience you will do anything as a piece of cake. > The NetBSD documentation in general is sane. I'm not sure the same can be said for the Fujitsu documentation. In part it share what I (as a former academic) think of as American textbookitis. Roughly the philosophy is not "here is a succinct exposition with some helpful examples and exercises" but "in this chapter you will learn how to do X,Y and Z: you probably don't want to do any of these, but tough, that's what you're getting". It suggests that the authors don't have a real command of their material but only know some concrete operations. Also the BIOS on these machines behave oddly: you can have a device that shows up in the list of SATA devices, but in the boot menu is on a different port; the BIOS boot menu works only sporadically; it can take several power cycles and quiescent periods for these things to correct themselves. I had more words with Fujitsu tech support this morning and they suggest that there may be an issue concerning the boot filter (UEFI/Legacy) which I shall pursue - although so far as I am aware I have done everything in Legacy mode. -- Steve Blinkhorn <st...@prd.co.uk> > On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 05:31:28PM +0000, Steve Blinkhorn wrote: > > After various helpful discussions off-list, I have come to a point where > > there remains an issue concerning how to set the redirection of the > > console over a remote management console. > > > > It boils down to where and how to set consdev to com0, and how to > > ensure that a remote session behaves nicely through the boot process > > and into a multi-user login seamlessly. There are three stagers to > > this: > > > > 1. how to ensure that one can choose from the initial boot menu - it's > > not much use if you can see the boot menu but not choose from it. > > > > 2. how to be sure that the hardware probe and rc.conf output can be > > viewed remotely in real time. > > > > 3. how to end up with a usable login session via the remote management > > console. > > > > I have found that setting consdev=com0 in boot.cfg defeats choice from > > the boot menu as does `installboot -e -v -o console=com0 ...` . What > > is more, no output from the hardware probe and rc.conf is visible > > remotely. Since my prime objective is to be able to fsck in > > single-user mode, this was bad news. > > > > However, dropping to the boot prompt and setting consdev to com0 does > > allow you to boot and see all the initial diagnostics (and get to a > > single-user shell). Adding the following line in boot.cfg has the > > same effect: > > > > menu=Boot single user:rndseed /etc/entropy-file;consdev com0; boot netbsd > > -s > > > > The fact that consdev=com0 in boot.cfg does not have the same effect > > does not align with the man page for boot.cfg(5). > > > > Additionally, an entry in /etc/ttys for /dev/tty00 is needed to give a > > clean multi-user terminal connection through the remote console. I > > have set all relevant line speeds to 115200 baud, and found no benefit > > is using 9600 baud at any point. > > > > I don't know how much of this is peculiar to the Fujitsu Primergy 1330 > > M3 R8 servers I am working on, but it's been a long and frustrating > > journey, alleviated only by the customary kindly helpfulness of the NetBSD > > community. > > > > -- > > Steve Blinkhorn <st...@prd.co.uk> > > -- > Sincerely yours, > Dima Veselov > Physics R&D Establishment of Saint-Petersburg University >
