RE: Serial console

[Svein E. Seldal]

Yes, what I have observed is that when you select the serial console by
pressing a key before the timeout, the output is still sent to the VGA
screen. I can navigate the menus or get the grub console _from_ the serial
"keyboard" (the native keyboard is ignored), but the output is sent to the
VGA screen. Absolutely no output is sent to the serialport during this
selection, and without a VGA monitor, I cannot see what selection I'm
making. Except *after* you have chosen image to boot from, then it prints
the pre-boot messages on the serialport. Has anyone else seen this?

BTW: If the vga/serial console "selection" times out, the serial port is
selected as input source, which is correct.

I have not tested with any newer version of grub, nor have I tested with
other kinds of configurations. Yet. I will do some more testing too see if
this bug presists, but I must create a test environment for this, because
the said server is a production server. I'll keep You all posted.

Regards,
Svein


> -----Original Message-----
> From: chris [mailto:chris]On Behalf Of Christoph Plattner
> Sent: 11. april 2002 23:53
> To: Yoshinori K. Okuji
> Cc: Christoph Plattner; Danilo Godec; Svein E. Seldal; address@hidden
> Subject: Re: Serial console
>
>
> Yes, you are right, I have to apologize !
>
> So, I have not really the semantic of this option.
>
> Let's try with the new status of knowledge:
>
> * GRUB only support 2 kinds of console: one is serial, the other is
>   VGA/KBD.
> * While the timeout is running, all (= 2) consoles are "polled" if
>   a user reaction is detected, if one is detected, then this device
>   is select as console device. Correct ?
> * If the timeout runs out, then the console type is used, which is given
>   as parameter in the `terminal' call.
>
> Is this the correct semantic ?
>
> BTW: The wording of that stuff is not the best in GRUB (should not
> want to cirticize here, but a suggestion for the future):
>
> CONSOLE is the basic device a system uses to interact with the
> environment.
> If a system is fully up, also other terminal interfaces and network
> services
> (telnet, etc) can be used to interact with the machine.
>
> A system canbe configured to a "serial console" or to a "...." (and this
> is the difficult part !), for example "screen/keyboard" is often used
> on UNIX machines, "VGA/keyboard" is also suitable for PC architecture.
>
> So the call `terminal' should be named
>       console --timeout=0 vga
> and/or
>       console --timeout=0 serial
> etc....
>
> But again, perhaps an idea for the future.
>
> With friendly regards
> Christoph P.
>
>
> "Yoshinori K. Okuji" wrote:
> >
> > At Thu, 11 Apr 2002 10:27:41 +0200,
> > Christoph Plattner wrote:
> > > AFAIK the problem is, that the `terminal --timeout=5 serial'
> > > defaults after the timeout to the VGA/keyboard console.
> >
> > Christoph, are you sure? have you ever seen such a behavior really?
> >
> > As the documentation says, it defaults to serial terminal. If you're
> > in doubt, try it.
> >
> > Okuji
> >
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> > http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-grub
>
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