Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2015 20:06:39 -0700 From: David Wolfskill <david@catwhisker.org> To: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Puzzle involving serial console and ...??!? Message-ID: <20150831030639.GH1153@albert.catwhisker.org>
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--HuscSE0D68UGttcd Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I may be going mad -- that's likely the simplest explanation, and Occam's Razor would thus indicate that this hypothesis should be accorded a degree of plausibility, at least. As described in <http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/FreeBSD/upgrade.html>, I have my own quirky ways of upgrading FreeBSD systems, the basics of which remain fundamentally unchanged for the last dozen years (well, a few more than that, but...). In turn, much of that approach was borrowed from one of my pre-FreeBSD experiences in an IBM mainframe environment (as a "systems programmer"). What's causing me to question my tenuous grasp of reality is this: Referencing the above-cited Web page, my build machine ("freebeast") normally runs headless, and I use a cable to connect its serial port to the serial port of one of my other machines ("albert"). By doing so, I have a working serial console (once the FreeBSD loader gains control from the BIOS, at least)... half the time. I have determined that whether or not I have a functioning serial console for freebeast depends on whether I boot albert from slice 1 or slice 2: if from slice 1, it doesn't work; if from slice 2, it does. Even when the contents of the 2 slices are functionally equivalent (that is, the file systems of the 2 slices are as "the same" as a "dump 0Lf | restore" pipeline can make them, except for a deliberate difference in the contents of /etc/fstab (as the root and /usr file systems are on different slices in the two cases)). I use tip(1) on albert to access the serial port (as I have since 1998); I leave the speed at the default of 9600 because it has -- save for this case -- always worked for me in the past. Does anyone have any suggestions for figuring out what is really going on here? While I can't just reboot "albert," I have another (similar) machine ("pogo") that I use for testing stuff that I plan to do to albert, and I could easily connect teh serial cable to pogo instead of albert and tinker with that. Thanks. I'm on the list, so list replies need not Cc: me. Peace, david --=20 David H. Wolfskill david@catwhisker.org Those who would murder in the name of God or prophet are blasphemous coward= s. See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for my public key. --HuscSE0D68UGttcd Content-Type: application/pgp-signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iQJ8BAEBCgBmBQJV48S/XxSAAAAAAC4AKGlzc3Vlci1mcHJAbm90YXRpb25zLm9w ZW5wZ3AuZmlmdGhob3JzZW1hbi5uZXQ4RThEMDY4QTIxMjc1MDZFRDIzODYzRTc4 QTY3RjlDOERFRjQxOTNCAAoJEIpn+cje9Bk7ROMP/iX3H4eQcykJcotlnt3utqsf xZrb8PaduykO7cgFENTNhsE/JKYgUojScyJKpppzHYM+M+seg8c1b36FYIN9Kuwj HLaSjRYUu8LYn9ub03a4pRHOO5G7X0Dao6O/6BYNLu6jwpvN+ISAg8xpMfHoTzXI rAo/M4HppIlHooD3+d4QV5bFt6dVEEKjSY9cFXi8/pDtnWAl+WqbmAf7huPmGUNF l+e5EyxCYseguHUPp3r7W1GPiMNKL7CA3KBIUTmdvJgRwxL+w32ocRocVWFPjj+F VfuASPjCoytFW6vSsJVoZ3CihxsxWB0/TW3zlQNDf9ehfbPJ1JkyYsMqKIgVWs7e VARN8ThzwNjc+HeXqiCeHfnH8SxJZHGY7/uZQYcO867GtrIIj8VhvLBKlK3/TPXs g3q/4wREtsmUye/Dza4kGAJqdgkykfT5NY6Hejkzdp33GGdqM1+twZrTg5rAFlpE PkSS3hGFmKVsMj8wmT/JlR5bTwdegRRT9FQZ5pQALFPBwByuFN2u3UJnbDoAUVGd irZ2TwNDgHUJykygN2R1TZIVMcBJHUzQ0QNWj+5gCKEX2+LwHIAQbqMVvnqfpluF NMTWT5EF9wd4tjQm/0iMC39e8FXXKrN1feLl4aiwnSkkUbp/PHKT6caC/2KuPcTm aHJ32VVgYpRMH6Awbktp =SD1j -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --HuscSE0D68UGttcd--
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