Re: serial console
Dan Purgert <dan@djph.net> writes:
> That being said, I believe one can still purchase proper serial cards as
> consumer hardware (i.e. $50 or so) that'll plug in to a PCIe x1 slot if
> you really need to get away from "USB" for some reason.
Well, sorta kinda maybe can purchase. Maybe if I had splurged $50 or
more on it... But for much less I did manage one, on the third try, a
few years ago. This was a lock-down time activity. One card wasn't
supported in Linux at least by in-kernel code, another shop sent wrong
kind of card, the third one works. In Linux that is, doesn't work in
Grub.
Also there was some weirdness in which slot the card would deign to work
and I think sound got disabled. Not a problem for a headless file server
though. But yes, I have a "serial console" on that PC where I can, once
Linux has booted, log in over the serial line. I can see boot messages
too.
On my router and one other computer with built-in serial ports I can
even interact with Grub over serial.
With this experience and also adding a network card to another PC, it
almost seems like PCIe wants to go back to ISA bus times as far as
usability goes. Although at least back then you had jumpers or dip
switches for configuration. Maybe it's just lack of testing or bad
motherboard design.
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