hi, FreeBSD-8 works great on these boards, but there are some gotchas, the boot and the serial: output works fine, but input is 'problematic'. the pxeboot serial handling is ok, the boot menu is ok, but booting off the CF (using boot0sio), the input 'screwy' at the selection of partition it is ignored, at the OK: prompt from the boot (i had no kernel in the slice), the input is usually doubled: sshooww instead of show which is probably similar to what is happening with boot0sio but it only echoes # (the current bell). Once the kernel is up, the serial works fine. any ideas? thanks, danny
On Wednesday 09 December 2009 17:13:57 Daniel Braniss wrote:> hi, > FreeBSD-8 works great on these boards, but there are some > gotchas, the boot and the serial: output works fine, but input > is 'problematic'. the pxeboot serial handling is ok, the boot menu > is ok, but booting off the CF (using boot0sio), the input 'screwy' > at the selection of partition it is ignored, at the OK: prompt > from the boot (i had no kernel in the slice), the input is usually > doubled: > sshooww instead of show > which is probably similar to what is happening with boot0sio but it > only echoes # (the current bell). > > Once the kernel is up, the serial works fine. > > any ideas? >Which ALIX board exactly? There are some differences (even various BIOSes). Any chance you have vga driver in kernel? TinyBIOS emulates VGA a bit, redirects output to serial port. If at the beginning you are trying both VGA and serial port, output is doubled. Similar behavior is observed on older WRAP boards, too. Milan
On 12/9/2009 11:13 AM, Daniel Braniss wrote:> hi, > FreeBSD-8 works great on these boards, but there are some > gotchas, the boot and the serial: output works fine, but input > is 'problematic'. the pxeboot serial handling is ok, the boot menu > is ok, but booting off the CF (using boot0sio), the input 'screwy' > at the selection of partition it is ignored, at the OK: prompt > from the boot (i had no kernel in the slice), the input is usually > doubled: > sshooww instead of show > which is probably similar to what is happening with boot0sio but it > only echoes # (the current bell). > > Once the kernel is up, the serial works fine.The development version of pfSense (2.0) is running on FreeBSD 8.0 using NanoBSD and its serial input/output works pretty well on ALIX, the 2d3.2d13 version at least (and others, but those are the only two I have used personally). My test ALIX is at home unplugged at the moment, but based on what I see in the image file there are a few things that were done: /boot/device.hints contains: hint.uart.0.at="isa" hint.uart.0.port="0x3F8" hint.uart.0.flags="0x10" hint.uart.0.irq="4" /boot.config contains: -h The initial boot0cfg on an image is done with: boot0cfg -B -b /path/to/boot/boot0sio -o packet -s 1 -m 3 <device> Here is what shows up when I mount an md device from a CF image: # boot0cfg -v /dev/md0 # flag start chs type end chs offset size 1 0x80 0: 1: 1 0xa5 444: 15:63 63 448497 2 0x00 445: 1: 1 0xa5 889: 15:63 448623 448497 3 0x00 890: 0: 1 0xa5 991: 15:63 897120 102816 version=2.0 drive=0x80 mask=0x3 ticks=182 bell=# (0x23) options=packet,update,nosetdrv volume serial ID 9090-9090 default_selection=F1 (Slice 1) Seems to work pretty well there. If you want the details, you can check out the pfSense tools git repository which contains the build scripts that generate the images. Jim
Am 09.12.2009 um 17:13 schrieb Daniel Braniss:> [B]ooting off the CF (using boot0sio), the input 'screwy' > at the selection of partition it is ignored, at the OK: prompt > from the boot (i had no kernel in the slice), the input is usually > doubled: > sshooww instead of show > which is probably similar to what is happening with boot0sio but it > only echoes # (the current bell).I've seen this happening when the BIOS also tries to talk to the serial port at the same time. Try changing the BIOS to stop doing console redirection once it starts booting, or replace boot0sio with boot0, and change boot(8) and loader(8) to only use the serial or BIOS console, but not both. Since I don't dual-boot anymore, I've replaced boot0 with a standard MBR, and start off with boot(8) on all machines. HTH, Stefan -- Stefan Bethke <stb@lassitu.de> Fon +49 151 14070811
> On 12/10/2009 2:32 AM, Daniel Braniss wrote: > >> Which ALIX board exactly? There are some differences (even various BIOSes). > >> Any chance you have vga driver in kernel? TinyBIOS emulates VGA a bit, > >> redirects output to serial port. If at the beginning you are trying both VGA > >> and serial port, output is doubled. Similar behavior is observed on older > >> WRAP boards, too. > > > > I have tried ALIX-1 and 2 > > here is an example: > > > > PC Engines ALIX.3 v0.99h > > 640 KB Base Memory > > 261120 KB Extended Memory > > Waiting for HDD ... > > > > 01F0 Master 848A SanDisk SDCFH2-002G > > Phys C/H/S 3970/16/63 Log C/H/S 992/64/63 > > > > 1 FreeBSD > > 2 FreeBSD > > 3 FreeBSD > > > > 6 PXE > > Boot: 1 > > > > any key I hit, it echoes as # and is ignored. > > at this point the kernel is not yet involved, so having vga+kb support > > is not the reason, though I will try out the alix-3, which has vga support, and > > a different BIOS soon.i have now, and the results are: - serial works - bios boot skips boot0, and goes straight to boot slice 1. The good side is that PXE boot works, but switching to boot from disk is a pain, on other systems, hitting ^C at the dhcp will stop it, and the boot will continue from disk, which if fails (forgot some critical setup :-), reboot, fix, boot ^C ...> > A lot of users have seen that happen, but typically it has been cleared > up by using ALIX BIOS v0.99h, which that box already appears to have, > and setting the BIOS for CHS mode. > > I haven't tried any of the ALIX models with VGA, but I have heard they > are working as long as you set the BIOS for APM power management.it's actualy setting Power Management to anything but ACPI.> (See > the previous -STABLE thread titled "8.0-rc2 dropped hardsupport". > > Jimcheers, danny