PCengines ALIX boot0sio serial input failes
Daniel Braniss
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
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Milan Obuch
> 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
Jim Pingle
> 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
Daniel Braniss
I have the same /boot/device.hints.
can you confirm that
1) when booting from CF, the boot0sio accepts input
2) the /boot/boot accepts input from the serial?
thanks,
danny
Daniel Braniss
> > 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.
> >
> >
>
> 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.
Stefan Bethke
> [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 <s...@lassitu.de> Fon +49 151 14070811
Jim Pingle
>> 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.
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. (See
the previous -STABLE thread titled "8.0-rc2 dropped hardsupport".
Jim
Jim Pingle
>> 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
>>> 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 can give serial input at any stage of booting, from the 1/2 boot slice
choice, the loader (I can get an OK prompt), etc.
I overlooked the "#" character you were getting when replying to this
message before, that typically means it cannot read the partition for
some reason, not that it isn't accepting input.
If this were a WRAP I'd say it might also be packet vs nopacket mode
when booting, but every ALIX I've had my hands on will boot pfSense
images with packet mode on the most current BIOS (0.99h).
You might try using a pfSense 2.0/FreeBSD 8 snapshot on a CF to see if
it exhibits the same behavior as your CF image. They should be available
from http://snapshots.pfsense.org/ There are also images for pfSense
1.2.3/FreeBSD 7.2 available on the normal download mirrors from
http://pfsense.org if you want to try those out. Just grab an image
sized for your CF (or smaller).
Daniel Braniss
> >> 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.
- 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".
>
> Jim
cheers,
danny