Trouble with LX164 serial console install
Greetings,
Finally got around to testing the potato boot floppies with
console=ttyS0. I'm using the potato boot floppies 2.2.13 from 5/4.
First problem: the tulip and old_tulip modules don't install in modconf,
says "Device or resource busy". On reboot, there was something about
eth0, de4x5.c which seems to indicate tulip is built in to the kernel.
So if this is built in, it should not also be a module, right?
Second: In dbootstrap, the "Make Linux bootable from hard drive" step
looks for milo on the floppy in a file named eb164, instead of lx164.
When it isn't found, there's no way to "Cancel" back to the dbootstrap
main menu, it infinite loops between "put in the floppy" and "can't find
eb164" dialogs. (The workaround is easy, just "cd /floppy; cp lx164
eb164" on a separate machine, reinsert and we're good, but there should
be a way to break out of the dialogs, right?)
Third: Escaped to a shell for finishing touches needed for serial
console. /etc/securetty came with ttyS0, which is cool. But when I
tried to edit inittab using ae (vi doesn't fit on the boot floppies),
there was a problem:
S-Lang Error: Unknown Error Code
SLcurses_initscr: init failed
then the # prompt, but only ^C key does anything, and it looks like it
LFs without CR, no other response to the keyboard. So I had to hard
reboot, without unmounting...
On the bright side: during the initial install, everything came up well
on LX164 with serial console, using "console=ttyS0". In fact, my old
Tex 4207 used as console couldn't handle the vt220 (?) commands in the
Slink startup, so it filled the screen with errors; potato is 1000% more
readable!
However, after rebooting (with no change to /etc/inittab), it reverts to
vt220 (?), so the screen is filled with errors and I can't read
anything, I'm guessing the questions and typing blind. It seems
"configure the base system" has detected that I'm on a serial console,
and modified inittab accordingly to run:
"dpkg-reconfigure debian-base < /dev/ttyS0 > /dev/ttyS0
Brilliant! But if you're going to go to the trouble to make dbootstrap
vt100-friendly, and inittab.real start up in a vt100-friendly way, well,
could it be possible to perform this step in such a way too?.
Much worse though, escape is now somehow trapped by the serial driver,
so when I force it to run vi (like, "Edit apt sources by hand"), I can't
do anything. ^C, ^Z, nothing works, I can't get out, I'm paralyzed, so
I hard reboot. But even though I set the root password and new user
name last time around, the potato installer comes up anyway. I can't
edit anything, anywhere, I can't finish installing...
Akha! I reboot with the rescue milo/floppy/root, execute a shell, and
copy inittab.real to inittab; this has also been intelligently
configured to start getty on /dev/ttyS0 with vt102, so it comes up very
nicely on my machine. Cool!
I run dpkg-reconfigure debian-base, and I'm installed.
These little problems are small, and perhaps specific to my particular
system, and nothing compared to the great strides with which this has
advanced beyond the Slink install. I hope the problems can be fixed,
but in the meantime, congratulations on a terrific installation system!
-Adam P.
Reply to: