Bug#868352: linux: Please enable USB_SERIAL_CONSOLE
Source: linux
Version: 4.11.6-1
Severity: normal
Dear Maintainer,
on some amd64 systems no native or PCI(e) serial ports are available
resp. possible. USB serial adapters are the only option to get a
serial console for debugging boot problems in this case. Unfortunately
the Debian amd64 kernels are built with USB_SERIAL_CONSOLE unset
(because USB_SERIAL is not built-in) so even that option isn't
available. When the BIOS text mode isn't working (e.g. high-res
monitor with a BIOS that only supports up to FullHD) one is left
without any working console device.
So please enable USB_SERIAL_CONSOLE (requires USB_SERIAL=y) for future
kernels and consider setting one of the USB serial adapter drivers to
built-in as well so that it's available before module loading. But
even just USB_SERIAL_CONSOLE alone (with all USB serial drivers as
modules) is likely better than the current situation; AFAICT the USB
serial console should get activated as soon the the USB serial driver
is loaded (haven't tested it, though).
Sascha
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.8
APT prefers oldstable
APT policy: (990, 'oldstable'), (500, 'oldstable-updates'), (100, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386
Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-0.bpo.2-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
Reply to: