Re: Creating serial output without losing keyboard control

[Hollis Blanchard]

On Aug 25, 2005, at 3:17 PM, Cheryl Homiak wrote:

> When I used lilo, I could use the serial command in the configuration 
> to allow me to at least see when the boot occurred and to add ctrl-G 
> to a message file so I also got an auditory beep. I can do this in 
> grub with the pause command, but if I do that I can never allow the 
> computer to boot unattended say, after a power failure, because it 
> will wait for a keypress before continuing. It just occurs to me as I 
> write this that maybe there is a way to use a timeout variable to 
> avoid this problem, but I haven't checked that.

What happens if you put a ^G into one of the "titles"? Does it beep 
when the menu appears?
> Is there any possibility of providing an option to separate the output 
> from the input. I need to be able to receive the output via my braille 
> or speech equipment through the serial port but maintain input control 
> at the keyboard so I can respond to that output. Of course to some 
> extent I can estimate when loading of grub takes place and to some 
> extent I can just memorize my kernel choices and arrow down with no 
> feedback, but there are times when these really aren't the best 
> practices to have to follow.

After having a quick look at the code, splitting the input and output 
doesn't seem difficult.

Actually, why shouldn't we just send output to all registered 
terminals, and accept input from any of them? That doesn't look 
difficult either.

> Since it's my understanding that grub legacy is not being actively 
> developed, it made more sense to me to request this feature in grub2.

Yes, thanks for asking here.

Let me ask you though: is splitting input and output the ideal 
solution, or just something you can live with? If you could have any 
solution you can imagine, what would be the best? For example, a 
different tone playing as you select each title in the menu? I suppose 
built-in speech synthesis would be the best... and I guess that's not 
really possible without actual sound drivers?

-Hollis