Hi! I've seen FreeBSD being installed over a serial console and thought "Hmm, how can I do this with debian?". I was aware of the sercons stuff in recent 2.1 kernels. Initiated by a question from Shane Wegner on debian-user I tried it out (up to "partition a harddisk" - I had no spare disk to continue). Cleto Pescia <cleto@e-link.ch> finished an installation and sent me all those missing hints. I'm summing this up for all those of you intereseted in it. It's based on Debian 2.0 (hamm), but should work with other versions, too. Get a recent 2.1 (or 2.2) kernel or patch your 2.0 sources with Miquel van Smoorenburg's patch to backport the sercons stuff: <ftp://ftp.cistron.nl/pub/people/miquels/kernel/> Build a replacement kernel for the installation disk. Enable sercons, initrd, ext2, msdosfs and all needed drivers. Do not use modules (or prepare to hack the driver disk, too). Check the install manual for more details (in case I missed something) Put the kernel on the rescue disk: mount /tmp/resc1440.bin /mnt -o loop cp the new kernel to /mnt/linux and run sh /mnt/rdev.sh Edit /mnt/syslinux.cfg to automatically boot with sercons: set TIMEOUT to 1 and add "console=ttyS0,9600n8" to all APPEND lines (for "COM1", 9600 Baud, no parity, 8bits, software handshake) (possibly unneded if you have no graphics card and keyboard attached) Add the needed /dev/console to the rescue disk's root-fs: zcat /mnt/root.bin > /tmp/root.bin mount /tmp/root.bin /floppy mknod -m 622 console c 5 1 as root umount /floppy gzip -c9 /tmp/root.bin > /mnt/root.bin The new rescue disk image is done. umount /mnt Make a boot floppy cp /tmp/resc144.bin /dev/fd0 boot from the rescue disk, select monocolor and your keyboard (used for virtual console), select "open a shell" from the menu, manually run "fdisk" (cfdisk segfaults), exit the shell and continue installation as usual (alternatively symlink cfdisk -> fdisk in root.bin) before you reboot your new system, reopen a shell. make the new-style console device rm /target/dev/console cp /dev/console /target/dev/ (alternatively modify base*.tgz) Instruct lilo to use the sercons, too: echo 'append = "console=ttyS0,9600n8"' >> /target/etc/lilo.conf echo 'serial=0,9600n8' >> /target/etc/lilo.conf lilo Make root logins via the sercons possible: echo "ttyS0" >> /target/etc/securetty and put a getty on the serial line: Edit /target/etc/inittab and uncomment the line starting with T0. (alternatively modify /etc/init-tab in root.bin) reboot Special Thanks to: Miquel van Smoorenburg for the sercons patch Cleto Pescia <cleto@e-link.ch> for finishing what I started. Rainer -- KeyID=58341901 fingerprint=A5 57 04 B3 69 88 A1 FB 78 1D B5 64 E0 BF 72 EB
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