Re: serial console

[naddy@mips.inka.de (Christian Weisgerber)]

Henning Brauer <lists@bsws.de> wrote:

> It is _really_ important that the machine boots even if there is
> no terminal attached (I've read 'bout such a prob on a freebsd
> mailing list archive).

Ah, yes, there is a problem with some things apparently expecting
DCD to be on.  I forgot the details.  You could bridge DCD to DTR
in the cable to take care of this.

> For logging in, i just need to change the line in /etc/ttys as follows, 
> right?
> 
> tty00 "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600" vt220 on secure

Yes.

> For the boot messages I've read something vague about a -DSERIAL in Makefile, 

# echo 'set tty com0' >/etc/boot.conf

> For the client side I thought about minicom, better advices?

I don't like minicom.  It's a clone of Telix for DOS, and as such
it mixes up terminal emulation (generally unnessary on a unix box,
as you already are on a terminal) and communications.  cu(1) and
tip(1) ship with the system but are somewhat primitive.  Personally
I tend to use ports/comms/kermit.

> And, btw, is there a possibility to reboot the machines automagically if it 
> should ever crash/enter ddb?

It should reboot automatically if it is not set to enter ddb(4).
Take a look at /etc/sysctl.conf.  However this is obviously not
reliable, since a crash may hose the system so much that the kernel
may fail to trigger a reboot.  If you really need automatic reboot,
you must have a hardware watchdog.

-- 
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de