Denny White wrote:
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I've hunted around the archives, googled, read
the faq on serial consoles, read what's in my
copy of Absolute OpenBSd, but can't seem to
find what I need to fix my problem. Running obsd
3.9 on one box & obsd 3.8 on an ancient p90.
I connected my nullmodem cable to #1 serial
connection on each box. I've got the regular
suggested settings in ttys, that is:
tty00 "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600" vt100 on secure.
You did that on ONLY ONE BOX, right?
ONLY the box you are trying to use the serial console on, NOT the box
that is running tip(1).
(trust me, you don't want to do this on both boxes, then run tip on one
of them... In fact, don't assume, go check it. Really. I know this is
a potential issue because I once forgot I had set a machine up for a
serial terminal...then months later, tried to use it as the terminal for
a machine with a serial console. ugly.)
I know about the security problem with 'secure' but
this is just on my lan, for learning purposes. I
also tried different baud rates and vt settings,
but the same thing happens each time. After I
connect from the client box with 'tip tty00' & I
type 'set tty com0'on the other box, the display comes
up on the client box really weird, spread out across
the screen & wrapping, & more often than not, after
a few minutes, it starts making a continuous alarm
sound and you can't enter anything else in. I have
gotten as far as logging in a couple of times, but
not too many. Even after hitting ~. to disconnect,
most of the time you can't reboot in the proper manner.
It'll get as far as 'syncing' & that's it. It just hangs.
One box are the other has to be reset & then the other
box will finish syncing & reboot.
My friend told me that problems like that usually
are caused by the fifo, & that I should disable it,
Your friend is wrong, I do think.
If anything, that would make things worse, not better. FIFOs on serial
ports are your friend, at least if properly implemented. Yes, some HW
vendors have been known to screw it up. Disabling isn't the right
answer, though...new hardware is a better plan.
Once Again, a dmesg would have been nice.
but I haven't figured out how to do it. I looked at
GENERIC and see the pccom settings but nothing about
disabling fifo. I did boot -c & saw pccom in there,
but again, I don't know what to do about it. I was
wondering too, if it's a problem between the video cards.
more likely to be a problem with the color of the case.
(i.e., no, it's not the video cards).
Assuming you didn't alter /etc/ttys on both machines, you need a third
vote. A wild guess, based on a lack of hard information, is that you
have a machine running out of spec. Which one? No idea. Could be the
old P90 (age) or the newer machine (cheap junk), or both a little out of
spec in different directions. That's why you need a third machine to
try, and see who can talk to what. It sounds like you are doing things
pretty close to right, otherwise, you would not have logged in at all.
I'm more suspicious of changes made to /etc/ttys on the "terminal"
machine, though.
Nick.
