Bug#408588: Debian on SGI Altix IA-64

[dann frazier <dannf@dannf.org>]

On Fri, Feb 02, 2007 at 01:25:39PM -0500, St?phane Larose wrote:
> I agree - not creating the serial device would be a problem for a pci serial 
> card.

Ok, let's drop this option then

> > Is there a way we can support both? What if we create a ttySG0 file in
> > init-udev-devices and pass console=ttySG0 to the kernel[2]?
> > If that works, I don't think its a big deal to ask altix users to pass
> > console=ttySG0 to the installer - we could even put it in the elilo
> > help menu (which isn't localized).
> >
> > St?phane: can you test these two patches and report back what works?
> > If /proc isn't mounted at this point, you might remove the if
> > statement around [2].
> 
> The first patch works. When testing the second one, I realized that passing 
> console=xx or CONSOLE=xx is not the same (sorry about that). console in 
> lowercase is used by the kernel as the console and not keep as an environment 
> variable. Using CONSOLE in uppercase is not used by the kernel but passed as 
> an environment variable.

The way I read the busybox source, it looks for CONSOLE= first then
console=:

static void console_init(void)
{
...
        if ((s = getenv("CONSOLE")) != NULL || (s = getenv("console")) != NULL) {
            safe_strncpy(console, s, sizeof(console));
...

I don't really understand how kernel command line options become env
vars though - is something preventing console= from being an env var
at this point?

-- 
dann frazier