From owner-freebsd-stable Thu Jan 13 3:51:19 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mass.cdrom.com (castles544.castles.com [208.214.165.108]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6DA3D14A0A for ; Thu, 13 Jan 2000 03:51:16 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from msmith@mass.cdrom.com) Received: from mass.cdrom.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mass.cdrom.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id DAA01817; Thu, 13 Jan 2000 03:58:11 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from msmith@mass.cdrom.com) Message-Id: <200001131158.DAA01817@mass.cdrom.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.1.1 10/15/1999 To: Dag-Erling Smorgrav Cc: cjclark@home.com, adam@algroup.co.uk (Adam Laurie), stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: console disappears after reboot In-reply-to: Your message of "13 Jan 2000 11:45:15 +0100." Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 03:58:10 -0800 From: Mike Smith Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > [moved to -stable from -security] > > "Crist J. Clark" writes: > > Adam Laurie wrote, > > > Crist J. Clark wrote: > > > > > Anyway, to cut a long story short, I would prefer to simply do something > > > > > in /etc/rc.local to force the console back to local kb/vga, or disable > > > > > the serial console in the kernel itself... so my question is: what? Is > > > > > there such a command/setting? > > > > If a console has "died," you should [HUP init] > > > Unfortunately not. I assume it only tries to refresh the serial console. > > I don't think so. Is the getty(8) for the device (I assume ttyv0) still > > in the ps(1) output? If it is, perhaps kill it. Either kill it dead > > and SIGHUP init(8) to start the new one, or maybe some signal (a HUP?) > > refreshes a getty. > > You're totally off the track. His problem is that the kernel (or the > boot loader) decides that there is no built-in console and uses a > serial console instead. This has nothing to do with init(8). I guess > the right person to answer this kind of question would be Mike Smith > or Daniel Sobral. I don't have any context for this, so it's a bit hard to be sure. The decision as to which console to use is normally made by boot2; it will use the video and keyboard BIOS unless: a) the -h flag is supplied in /boot.config b) the -P flag is supplied in /boot.config AND the BIOS has not set the 'extended keyboard present' flag. This decision can be overridden with a setting in /boot/loader.conf which can cause the loader to switch to another console, and it can be overridden again by flags set on an sio device. So in summary; there's nothing that will "decide there is no built-in console" unless you explicitly tell it to go look for itself. Anything that's causing the system to talk to a serial console is at the admin's request. At this point in time, there is no way to force a change of console once the system is up and running. -- \\ Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. \\ Mike Smith \\ Tell him he should learn how to fish himself, \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ and he'll hate you for a lifetime. \\ msmith@cdrom.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message