[Soekris] FreeBSD 7.0 on a net4801?

[Jan Hoevers]

Jed Clear wrote on 1-3-2008 13:50:
> On Sat, 1 Mar 2008, Jan Hoevers wrote:
>> Graham Menhennitt wrote on 1-3-2008 7:56:
>>> Paul Hoffman wrote:
>>>> Greetings again. I'm trying to install FreeBSD 7.0 on a net4801 with
>>>> no luck. After the (unreadable over serial) boot prompt, during the
>>>> 10-second countdown, I hit return. The cursor goes almost to the left
>>>> end of the screen and stops. It doesn't respond to typing.
>>>> Eventually, the system reboots.
>>> I had no problem installing a pre-release version of 7.0 a few months ago. Why is the serial output unreadable? The Soekris BIOS talks at 9600 baud and FreeBSD defaults to 19200 so you might need to change baud rates in mid boot. I also needed to disable DMA as a few recent messages have mentioned. But it doesn't sound like you're even getting that far. What are you installing from and to?
>> It's the other way round actually.  Soekris bios defaults to 19200 baud
>> and FreeBSD to 9600.
>> An easy solution is to set the bios to 9600, no need for acrobatics like
>> changing baud rate in mid boot.
> 
> Along the same lines, you need to tell FreeBSD to use a serial console.
> Otherwise it assumes you have a graphics adapter and keyboard attached.  I
> forget off the top of my head the incantation needed, but it's in the
> Handbook.

Create a file /boot.config with -P in it.  Activate ttyd0 in /etc/ttys.
That's all.  You may want to deactivate ttyv0 to ttyv8 in /etc/ttys.

Jan