Console Redirection After Boot

[Gordon Henderson]

On Tue, 31 Oct 2006, Brian A. Seklecki wrote:

> All:
>
> What's the deal with this feature?  Was it intended to be used for any
> relatively modern OS?
>
> It seems to work with DOS and Memtest86+, and perhaps then even some of
> the bootable FreeDOS based utils available from Dell.
>
> But forget about using it for anything that "does not use the BIOS for
> console I/O."
>
> All the Dell Linux docs I find suggest not using it; use the DRAC
> VGA->VNC feature instead,  but Dell really bungled that with the new
> DRAC5 and the ActiveX dependency (imagine that, an embedded Linux device
> that serves an ActiveX applet -- the irony is painful)

I can't answer your question about using BIOS for console IO, so this may
not help, but I do use "console over serial" in many (remote) Linux
installations I have (None Dell, but I see no reason why it won't work in
a Dell). You can make lilo use the serial line (and I'm sure grub too),
and it's a compile & command-line feature for the linux kernel (but I'd be
surprised it if wasn't included in the standard Dell/RH kernels, and you
just needed to activate it somehow - eg. in the grub config file)

In lilo.conf it's as simple as putting:

  serial=0,57600n8

in it somewhere, and to make linux use it, you need something like:

  append="console=ttyS0,57600n8"

in the same file. I'm sure grub does it in a similar fashion, but I don't
use grub so can't comment there. I do it this way on another vendors mobos
which have a BIOS over serial switch, so if required I can connect to a
servers serial line (cisco terminal concentrator thingy) power cycle it,
and from then on, do bios "stuff", then boot lilo and do lilo poking, then
into linux (with extra command-line "stuff", if required, and it all "just
works".

There is also a comple-time version of memtest to make it work over a
serial-line too (rather than rely on the console redirection, I guess)
I've used this too (but also have the non-serial line version of
memtest86+ installed too!)

Gordon