[Soekris] Re: NET4501 not coming up unless COM is attached

[Alan Wilkie]

Geoff,

I have the same problem.  I'm not 100% sure that this is a fix, but try 
adding:

boot bsd

(or whatever the filename of your kernel is) to your /etc/boot.conf.  
When I first saw this problem I added the boot line and it seemed to fix 
it.  My NET4501 lives in the roof, so when it has problems booting I 
have to relocate it to find out why (I might run a serial cable up there 
one day...).

The downside of booting immediately with "boot bsd" is that you don't 
get a chance to get to the "boot>" prompt if you need to.  You either 
have to ssh in, edit your boot.conf and reboot, or if you can't do that, 
take the flash card to another system and edit boot.conf there.  It can 
be a tedious process...

Alan

> I have a  NET4501 running OpenBSD 3.7 done with flashdist.
> Its been in operation for over a year now.
> I think this is recent behavior but I can't be sure.
> I also remember seeing this problem on the list but searching a few 
> months back by hand didn't yield any results
> (Is it possible to put in a search button that would search all the 
> archives, does this service exist anywhere out there? )
>
> Anyway.  The system boots but seems to hang right at the handoff to the OS.
> When I connect a terminal (securecrt) to the port and hit a carriage 
> return, the system continues to boot up no problem.  This is a problem 
> if I expect these boxes to reboot after a power outage. this isn't 
> happening.
> solutions? pointers? flames?
>
> geoffw
>
> p.s. yes it has a  /etc/boot.conf with ...
> ecotopia# more boot.conf
> set tty com0
> stty com0 19200