Syslinux - Jun 2011 - Is this a problem with pxelinux or a Soekris bios?

Hello,

 Recently I have discovered a problem with serial console output when 
 net-booting a Soekris net5501 board via pxe. When using pxelinux.0 from 
 syslinux 4.04 package I get only 15 characters from the output, then the 
 carriage returns back to the same line over and over again, making it 
 impossible to read the output. What is more the booting process (trying 
 configuration files with hardware address and ip addresses as names) is 
 very slow. When it boots up a linux kernel the console output becomes 
 fine.
 When I was looking for the solution for this I found the link for the 
 old version (2.06) of pxelinux.0, patched to work well with Soekirs 
 boards: http://centerclick.org/net4801/pxelinux
 Is this a bug in the pxelinux.0 package or in Soekris boards? Is there 
 any possibility to patch recent versions of pxelinux with similar patch?

 Regards,
 Rafa?

On 06/29/2011 05:56 AM, harakopr at iem.pw.edu.pl wrote:
>  Hello,
> 
>  Recently I have discovered a problem with serial console output when 
>  net-booting a Soekris net5501 board via pxe. When using pxelinux.0 from 
>  syslinux 4.04 package I get only 15 characters from the output, then the 
>  carriage returns back to the same line over and over again, making it 
>  impossible to read the output. What is more the booting process (trying 
>  configuration files with hardware address and ip addresses as names) is 
>  very slow. When it boots up a linux kernel the console output becomes 
>  fine.
>  When I was looking for the solution for this I found the link for the 
>  old version (2.06) of pxelinux.0, patched to work well with Soekirs 
>  boards: http://centerclick.org/net4801/pxelinux
>  Is this a bug in the pxelinux.0 package or in Soekris boards? Is there 
>  any possibility to patch recent versions of pxelinux with similar patch?
> 
>  Regards,
>  Rafa?
> 
It's a bug in the Soekris BIOS having to do with the way it does serial
console for BIOS.

That patch basically implements the "console 0" directive, which is
available in stock Syslinux now.  That disables the conventional console
so one can direct things to the serial port explicitly.

	-hpa