Booting an apu2

[beavers]

I'm attempting to install NetBSD on an apu2c0 from pcengines.ch, but having trouble booting the installer image. Sounds like it's the same issue that FreeBSD has on this device -- namely, the serial port runs at 115200 baud, whereas the installer defaults to 9600.

Is there a reasonable way to set the console speed from the boot menu? I'm vaguely aware that you can adjust boot.conf or recompile the kernel to achieve this, but I'm limited at the moment to the serial connection.

Edit to add: I tried pxe boot as well, but it seems like the same thing occurs -- the kernel starts booting, then just hangs.

[jggimi]

I'm not a NetBSD user, and I don't have any APUs. But I do have PC Engines Alix platforms. While not the same as APUs, these can be configured to use other serial port speeds with keystrokes at power-on, so I assume it is the same with the APUs. If so, you can use cu(1) or a similar serial program at 115200, and use it to configure the APU's serial port speed to 9600 at power-on to match the requirements of your installer.

[beavers]

It seems they've removed the BIOS option for adjusting the console port baud rate.

I did discover this: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/1...ne-apu2.58273/

Turns out these options can be adjusted from the loader(3) prompt on FreeBSD. Does the NetBSD bootloader have any similarly configurable options?

[jggimi]

Yep. A quick browse of the boot(8) man page brought me to boot_console(8), defining the string you can set in a boot.cfg(5) file.

[beavers]

Unfortunately, those appear to be usable at compile-time only -- see "BUGS" at the end of boot_console(8). Oh, well.

[jggimi]

While it's not the BSD you want, OpenBSD's bootloader can do this with an /etc/boot.conf file. All you need is a two line /etc/boot.conf file on the booting filesystem (optical, disk, or PXE). One line to set the console device to the first serial port, and a second line to set the speed to match the hardware:

set tty com0
stty com0 115200

Should you consider this as a possible solution, see the boot.conf(5) man page.

[beavers]

Originally Posted by jggimi

While it's not the BSD you want, OpenBSD's bootloader can do this with an /etc/boot.conf file. All you need is a two line /etc/boot.conf file on the booting filesystem (optical, disk, or PXE). One line to set the console device to the first serial port, and a second line to set the speed to match the hardware:

set tty com0
stty com0 115200

Should you consider this as a possible solution, see the boot.conf(5) man page.

Heh heh, that was actually the very first thing I did. I'm just looking for better throughput. With OpenBSD I'm only getting like 2Mbps, even forced to 11g mode. I tried all modes with not much difference. This is with an athn(4) card on the AP and iwn(4) on the client, both running OpenBSD.