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Old 31st October 2008
PeterSteele PeterSteele is offline
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Default Setting up the serial console

We have a terminal server hooked up to the serial console ports on our FreeBSD boxes. Everything works, almost. The problem is that when we reboot we want to be able to see the full boot log, including the BIOS and POST sessions. It seems though that the BIOS is running ata different baud rate than what we have configured for ttyd0 (115200). How do we configure the serial console so that everything is set to the same baud rate?
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Old 31st October 2008
adamk adamk is offline
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Add:

comconsole_speed="115200"

to your /boot/loader.conf file. Of course, change the baud rate to what it needs to be :-)

Don't forget to change the baud rate in /etc/ttys too, of course.

Adam
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Old 1st November 2008
PeterSteele PeterSteele is offline
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We already have that entry in loader.conf, as well as the line

ttyd0 "/usr/libexec/getty std.115200" vt100 on secure


in /etc/ttys. We still don't get the boot, just the latter part. None of the BIOS or early boot messages. Maybe the BIOS itself has serial console baud rate settings?
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Old 1st November 2008
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graudeejs graudeejs is offline
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how do you expect FreeBSD settings to affect your serial console at boot time, when fbsd ain't even loaded....???
Not possible!!!

Besides, BIOS boot is same every time..... unless some hardware fails, or someone hacks PC guts, without telling you....
you will still notice changes in dmesg, in this case

Last edited by graudeejs; 1st November 2008 at 10:01 AM.
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Old 2nd November 2008
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phoenix phoenix is offline
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In order to view the BIOS/POST boot messages, you'll have to have BIOS support for serial consoles. AKA boot redirection, or boot message redirect, and similar in the BIOS. However, then you also need to have a serial console configured before the OS boots, which generally means you need some kind of add-in management card.
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Old 3rd November 2008
PeterSteele PeterSteele is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by killasmurf86 View Post
how do you expect FreeBSD settings to affect your serial console at boot time, when fbsd ain't even loaded....???
Not possible!!!

Besides, BIOS boot is same every time..... unless some hardware fails, or someone hacks PC guts, without telling you....
you will still notice changes in dmesg, in this case
You're right, the BIOS has nothing to do with FreeBSD. I did find another FreeBSD option that gives us more of the boot text. We have to put the option

-S115200

in /boot.config, and that lets us see almost all of the FreeBSD boot session. The only thing that we don't see is the actual part that shows when it is loading these parameters, just before it displays the big FreeBSD splash page, but that's technically still in BIOS land. We don't see any of the BIOS boot messages, although I do have the BIOS set to use a serial console at 115200 baud. So I'm not sure what's going on there, but at least I have all of the core FreeBSD text displaying properly at 115200 baud.

Thanks for the replies. We're almost there.
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Old 3rd November 2008
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mdh mdh is offline
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If the BIOS claims to support it but it isn't working, then you'll probably need to ask your BIOS manufacturer for support.
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