Problem: RH6 installer assumes video console. The system (and kernel) console
is a serial port here, and after all the kernel messages are printed on it,
I get:
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
VFS: Mounted root (romfs filesystem).
Warning: unable to open an initial console.
Anyway, I haven't succesfully installed RH6 for this reason, but I remember
from the old RH52 box this same breakage. Same machine (ss5), same
procedure (TFTP boot and serial console). The RH52 installer seemed to
realize serial console was being used -- it made /dev/console a symlink to
ttyS0 and set up inittab to run one getty on ttyS0; it also BOOTED and
INSTALLED in the first place ;)).
The problem with this is that if I decide to plug in a keyboard and monitor,
the kernel would use the system console (framebuffer, now). But the
symlink to ttyS0 would remain and you'd see the kernel probes come up
on your monitor, then the rc scripts and getty on the serial port. So,
I tried making a real 5,1 /dev/console, and changing my getty to that.
This worked correctly, but logging in on it was painful - it doesn't seem
to be considered a tty device. Control chars like ^D, ^C, etc. didn't work
and terminal ioctls/tc*attr didn't work so the shell disabled job control.
The RH6 tftp image also doesn't seem to let me pass options to the kernel
so I can't make it use ttyS0 as the console. What gives, the silo on RH52
tftpboot.img could? Anyway, someone was gracious enough to send me a tftp
image wired to do serial -- it's not of any urgency but I believe it's an
issue that needs to be addressed sometime in the future.
--
Nathan Dorfman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The statements and opinions in my
Unix Admin @ Frontline Communications public posts are mine, not FCC's.
"The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an approaching
train." --/usr/games/fortune
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