Re: controlling installation from a serial terminal
On Thu, Jan 14, 1999 at 10:08:57PM -0500, James R. Van Zandt wrote:
> I am trying to set up boot files that will allow an installation to be
> controlled from a serial terminal. This would let a blind user
> install Debian, using a second computer with a terminal emulator and a
> speech synthesizer. (I once wrote up such a procedure for installing
> Slackware.)
There's already support for serial consoles on Sparc and VME/m68k. It's
trivial to use that on other architectures where the kernel supports
them. It's just a matter of #define SERIAL_CONSOLE on dinstall.h for i386
and booting with the proper kernel parameter (console=/dev/ttyS*).
> So far, I have done this:
[...]
> 2) When I run "ps", there is no process named login or getty.
>
> 3) There are no files /bin/login or /sbin/getty. I could not find
> either program anywhere in the filesystem. Are those entries in
> /scripts/rootdisk/prototype/etc/init_tab completely bogus?
The whole init_tab is completely bogus, as the modified init on the
rootdisk doesn't use it. It's just a prototype that will be copied to
/target/etc/inittab after installing the base system.
> Any pointers would be appreciated.
I would try using a 2.1.x kernel. There may be other problems, as the
floppies have been tested with 2.0.x kernels only, but it may work.
--
Enrique Zanardi ezanardi@ull.es
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