[TriLUG] Stupid question time - Serial terminal and Linux

[Mike M]

On Tue, Feb 24, 2004 at 06:54:06PM -0500, Timothy A. Chagnon wrote:
> Actually, I know it's possible with a little kernel futzing and lilo. 
> Check out your /usr/src/linux-2.?/Documentation/serial-console.txt file
> from the kernel source.
> 
> Specifically it says you can use the kernel boot line option
> console=ttyS0,9600 to get /dev/console to the serial port.  That's just
> kernel info though.

console= is a parm to lilo - yes?
> 
> It also mentions something about lilo being able to take serial input. 
> Then setting the right things for getty to use the serial port for a
> login.  

see above

The problem with x86 loading over serial is that you have to modify 
so many things during the process.  LILO over serial one part.  You
may also need have to have BIOS control to specify the boot media. Then
syslinux or pxelinux needs to talk over COM1. Each and every time
control is transferred to another program in the loading/booting/init
process, modifications are necessary to talk over COMx instead of
VGA/kbd.
> 
> Also in theory, if the box your installing on supports PXE booting, you
> could set it to try to boot PXE before hard disk then run pxelinux on
> your server, specifying kernel options to do serial through that.
> 
> For that matter, if it'll pxe boot, you don't need serial.  Just use a
> kickstart file and nfs install source and you've got a auto install. 
> Once it's installed you can ssh.  I've recently done this with a lab at
> Wake Tech so I know the way to set it up right.  If you go this route
> and need help, email me.

http://syslinux.zytor.com/pxe.php#whatis
> 
> The people who would really know lots about this are the guys that built
> the Space Simulator cluster at LANL.  All their nodes have no removable
> media drives, no keyboards/mice/monitor, just NIC.  They use pxelinux to
> do reinstalls so they should know something about it.  The first pdf
> paper on their site documents well their exploits about the cluster, and
> is a good read, but probably won't have the exact info on doing serial
> stuff.  You could try emailing them to get some of their more specific
> methods.
> http://space-simulator.lanl.gov/
 
This is for using a network for sourcing load files and automating the
load process. Debian has the not-well-used FAI: 
http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/

This may be insufficient if the automated loading script is making the 
wrong choices and the user needs to intervene in the loading process.

-- 
Mike

Two hundred years ago, we note mischievously, the average American or 
European had a standard of living not very much superior to that of the
average man in India or China. -- dailyreckoning.com