Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2013 20:29:07 -0800 From: Jeremy Chadwick <jdc@koitsu.org> To: Daniel O'Connor <doconnor@gsoft.com.au> Cc: Konstantin Belousov <kostikbel@gmail.com>, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org, Navdeep Parhar <nparhar@gmail.com>, John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: IPMI serial console Message-ID: <20130222042907.GA75261@icarus.home.lan> In-Reply-To: <9F6E4B36-0C89-4409-91FB-08CC90848D23@gsoft.com.au> References: <E44ABF7A-3795-471B-B241-7103ECE2119E@gsoft.com.au> <51269ABD.2040308@gmail.com> <2AF6F8E4-A45E-4D4C-9232-FF09AD4A3641@gsoft.com.au> <5126A3A1.1030208@gmail.com> <64293C7A-038A-4EA1-B394-9E80CFCBC14F@gsoft.com.au> <20130221230001.GF2598@kib.kiev.ua> <20130221232929.GA91708@icarus.home.lan> <3FE71C9F-29B2-48F5-9A51-D312B1803E14@gsoft.com.au> <20130222013258.GA93350@icarus.home.lan> <9F6E4B36-0C89-4409-91FB-08CC90848D23@gsoft.com.au>
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On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 02:22:52PM +1030, Daniel O'Connor wrote: > On 22/02/2013, at 12:02, Jeremy Chadwick <jdc@koitsu.org> wrote: > >> Hmm I tried putting '-S 115200' in /boot.config and it broke - the boot process didn't run the loader (or kernel). > > > > I'll talk a bit about this -- again, sorry for the verbosity. I'll > > explain what I've historically used/done, then speculate a bit about > > your IPMI stuff: > > > > For me, on systems without IPMI, all I had to do was this (and nothing > > else): > > > > * Put the following in /boot.config: > > > > -S115200 -Dh > > This breaks the boot for me, boot.config has to contain more than just > flags it seems. In any case I believe setting boot_multicons and > boot_serial is the same as -Dh. Not sure about the baud rate though. Then someone broke something (parser or something else). This has always, *always* worked (just flags). The last time I verified it was with the release of 9.0-RELEASE. I do have a system I could test this on, but I'd need to find a null modem cable first. I have seen some MFCs that touch those bits in the bootloader, but from my memory it didn't touch anything other than supporting /boot/config as an alternate location to the classic /boot.config file. I would be very surprised if this broke it. I can assure you that those were the only flags that were needed, and in exactly that syntax. Even the Handbook has this in it, as well as boot(8). I believe your explanation of boot_multicons and boot_serial are correct and do correlate with -D and -h. I could look at the bootstrap code to verify. The options are described in loader(8) but not loader.conf(5). The drawback to using the /boot/loader.conf variables is that you won't get boot2 output because loader is what reads /boot/loader.conf, not boot2. Thus you lose the ability to deal with the system via serial at the boot2 stage. For me, this has always been a deal-breaker. This is why I always advocate /boot.config. (Note to readers: if I'm wrong about this, please correct me, and point me to the relevant code) > <snip> > > situation may be different because you have 3 serial ports (2 > > classic DB9 ports or headers, and one "fake" via IPMI), so you may need > > to rely entirely on /boot/loader.conf to accomplish use of the IPMI one, > > unless you wanted to set BOOT_COMCONSOLE_PORT. > > OK, I made some more progress, I rebuilt the /usr/src/sys/boot with > BOOT_COMCONSOLE_SPEED=115200 BOOT_COMCONSOLE_PORT=0x3e8 and now the > loader talks to me without VGA to serial redirection. Huzzah! Do you get output from the kernel now, or still just bootstraps and loader, then silence until getty runs? > > exactly why many motherboard vendors that do IPMI now offer a > > *physically separate NIC/RJ45 port* for it, rather than "piggybacking": > > the latter caused so much pain/anger that it wasn't worth it. > > I assumed that the separate NIC was to avoid this problem, however I > have since found that the default on the SM boards I looked at is to > use the dedicated port otherwise share(!). So the worst of both > worlds, hooray! Depends on the board and the IPMI integration. Most of the newer boards (past 3-4 years) I've seen have a dedicated LAN port on their IPMI add-on board; e.g. a dual-NIC motherboard has 2 NICs, then there's a 3rd NIC on the IPMI card/port. I have seen the shared ones though, and that's where the ASF stuff comes into play (ugh ugh ugh). I've always avoided all the boards that have "on-board" IPMI of any sort. -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc@koitsu.org | | UNIX Systems Administrator http://jdc.koitsu.org/ | | Mountain View, CA, US | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP 4BD6C0CB |
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