I just did a fresh install of Debian on my soekris over PXE. It was rather painless once I modified the debian-installer to output /only/ over serial and to set the right baud rate.
Basically once you extract the debian installer image (netboot.tar.gz), you extract to the tftp file directory, and make a few modifications: First off, you want to modify the: debian-installer/i386/boot-screens/syslinux.cfg file to look like: # D-I config version 2.0 SERIAL 0 19200 CONSOLE 0 include debian-installer/i386/boot-screens/menu.cfg #default debian-installer/i386/boot-screens/vesamenu.c32 prompt 0 timeout 0 That should set up syslinux/pxelinux to only output via serial. I also added 'serial 0 19200 0' to the top of boot-screens/menu.cfg and the 'serial' section from the debian bug tracker (http://lists.debian.org/debian boot/2008/11/msg00205.html) with a few modifications: menu begin serial menu title Serial console label mainmenu menu label ^Back.. menu exit include debian-installer/i386/boot-screens/stdmenu.cfg include debian-installer/i386/boot-screens/sadtext.cfg include debian-installer/i386/boot-screens/adamdtext.cfg menu end Then you want to add the sattext.cfg file, also from the debian bug tracker (with a few modifications): default sinstall label sinstall menu label ^Install menu default kernel debian-installer/i386/linux append vga=normal initrd=debian-installer/i386/initrd.gz -- console=ttyS0,19200n8 quiet label expert menu label ^Expert install kernel debian-installer/i386/linux append priority=low vga=normal initrd=debian-installer/i386/initrd.gz -- console=ttyS0,19200n8 label rescue menu label ^Rescue mode kernel debian-installer/i386/linux append debian-installer/serial-console vga=normal initrd=debian-installer/i386/initrd.gz rescue/enable=true -- console=ttyS0,19200n8 quiet label auto menu label ^Automated install kernel debian-installer/i386/linux append auto=true priority=critical vga=normal initrd=debian-installer/i386/initrd.gz -- console=ttyS0,19200n8 quiet After that, everything was working, the installer managed to work fine (if a bit ugly due to no extended ascii characters for drawing), and the installer set up grub and the kernel to output via serial with the same settings that were passed to the installer. Even grub's text menu works fine over serial. But just in case you just want to modify grub to output over serial, here's the important bits of the /etc/default/grub config: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="console=ttyS0,19200n8" GRUB_TERMINAL=serial GRUB_SERIAL_COMMAND="serial --unit=0 --speed=19200 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1" This way, grub skips the grapgical and text output, and only outputs via the first serial port, and sets up the linux kernels to output via ttyS0. I hope that helps someone. -- Thomas Fjellstrom [email protected] _______________________________________________ Soekris-tech mailing list [email protected] http://lists.soekris.com/mailman/listinfo/soekris-tech
