Re: serial console on 8.x (probably sio vs uart)

Thanks for the various suggestions, I seem to have it working
now.  For the benefit of anyone who finds this thread at a later
date, let me answer several of those replies in a single email.

>  >
>  > uart(4) does tell you when it's the console:
>>
>>  uart0: <16550 or compatible> port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 on acpi0
>>  uart0: [FILTER]
>>  uart0: console (115200,n,8,1)
>>
>>  The first question is: do you see a line like the one above?

No, there were no lines like that in dmesg.

>  > If not (most likely), try to boot explicitly with a serial
>  > console (i.e. set boot_serial=yes at the loader prompt or
>  > boot with -h).

A 'grep -i uart /var/run/dmesg.boot' came up with no lines
matched.  Nothing came up whether I do a plain 'boot', or  a
'boot -h', or 'set boot_serial=yes' followed by 'boot'.  A
grep of dmesg.boot also does not bring up any sio devices.

>He probably also needs to update his /boot/device.hints file.
>(change sio to uart)

I did copy /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/GENERIC.hints to
/boot/device.hints on the 8.x system.  That copy does have uart
entries and does not have any sio entries.  I did install a new
/etc/ttys too, and that lists uart devices instead of sio devices.

Historically, what I have done is boot up off an older (freebsd
6.x) partition, press '6' in the boot menu to escape to the loader
prompt, and then I enter:

   unload
   set currdev=disk1s4a:
   boot

(my 8.x install is on partition 4, while the 6.x install that I'm
actually booting up off of is on partition 2).  Also, the file
/boot.config on both partitions has the three letters '-PD' in it.
That sequence worked fine for a few years now, long enough that I
don't really remember everything I did to set it up...   :-)

Apparently, the trick is that /boot/device.hints is processed
before I dropped into the boot loader, and thus the hints were
read from the device.hints from the original (6.x) partition.  And
it seems that device.hints is not processed by the 'boot' command
itself, so the boot command I did after changing 'currdev' did not
pick up the newer device.hints on the 8.x partition.  I noticed this
when I did a 'show' (with no variable name) to see what loader
variables were already set.  The listing included all the hints
for the sio devices.

So if I enter the commands:

   set hint.uart.0.at="isa"
   set hint.uart.0.port="0x3F8"
   set hint.uart.0.flags="0x10"
   set hint.uart.0.irq="4"

before I do the 'boot' command, then the serial console comes up OK.

The quick and simple-minded solution for me is to create a "boot-8x"
file on the 6.x partition which has all the correct commands to boot
into 8.x, and then I can 'include' that file when I escape to the
boot-loader prompt.  (It also seems that 'include /boot/device.hints'
will fail with "stack underflow" if I try that after setting currdev.
Looks like 'include' trips up handling the '#' comment line).

In any case, I do have the serial console working now.  Thanks!

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad_at_gilead.netel.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad_at_freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih_at_rpi.edu