Serial booting

Forum: HD Install
Topic: Serial booting
started by: rfriedri

Posted by rfriedri on Sep. 29 2005,05:34

I hope someone can help me! First I have to say that this is one of the coolest OS's ever.

I want to configure DSL to boot/run over a serial terminal. The system and I am stuck with doesn't have a video and I can only use serial. I can put a video card into the box but once I close the box the video card / keyboard / mouse have to be disconnected. It's a 1U box and these devices are only
used with the system opened.

I kind of have it partially working but the last few edits are killing me.

I am using GRUB as the boot loader and added these statements:

serial --unit=0 --speed=9600 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
terminal serial

I also figured I had to edit the kernel boot line. Right now I added "console=ttyS0 console=ttyS0,9600"

I am not sure what to do with the vga=normal in this line.

I added this line to the /etc/inittab:
S0:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 9600 ttyS0

Also, I am using the frugal install.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Robin

Posted by skaos on Sep. 30 2005,13:10

Is there any possibility that you could dump the serial terminal in favour of an old PC (386/486 laptop maybe)? In that case you could use SLIP to set up a network connection through a null modem cable:
< http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/2820/print >
< http://www.dbaoncall.net/references/ht_connect_2pc.html >

As for the terminal, could it be that it uses some non-standard pin-out or cable? And maybe you (somehow) have to tell DSL what kind of terminal/protocol (VT100 ..) you are using.

Posted by rfriedri on Sep. 30 2005,23:50

That would be a great idea and I think it would work. But, the final goal is to boot (serially of course) then run various tests. However, this testing isn't going to be done by myself it's going to third party testing. I don't have control over how the other end attaches. All that I was given was a serial terminal running at 115200,8,n,1.

Right now I was able to get Debian doing what I need. But, it takes 256M compact flash not the 64M like DSL offers.