Fwd: [Soekris] running a program on the Serial port

[Matt Brown]

Hi, 

On Fri, 2004-07-23 at 10:28, Chuck Yerkes wrote:

> We've done this ride, it's in the archives.
> Someone hacked openbsd (see the archives for this list about serial
> ports) so the boot code could redirect the console to /dev/null.
> 
> Perhaps linux offers something similar.

By default (at least in the 2.4 series) the linux kernel will not output
anything to the serial port during boot. To enable kernel output to the
serial console during boot you need to enable the following option

Character Devices -> Support for Console on Serial port
CONFIG_SERIAL_CONSOLE (for those who like hacking .config by hand)

We have several soekris devices that we use the serial port for
something other than a console on and I have to agree with Chuck that it
is not the best solution as it makes debugging harder, but sometimes you
have to do it. Our solution is as follows.

1. Disable serial output in grub / lilo
2. Disable serial console support in the kernel
3. Remove getty etc from console in /etc/inittab
4. Start the application to access the serial port 

Hope this helps. 

Regards

-- 
Matt Brown
Email:	matt at mattb.net.nz
GSM: 	+64 21 611 544