On Thu, 19 Feb 1998, Amitai Schlair wrote:

> I've been running a IIci headless with NetBSD 1.3 for over a month now,
> very happily! It's running over a serial console, so in order to get
> things working more smoothly, I compiled a custom kernel with
> ZS_CONSOLE_ABORT undefined, among other things. However, if I shut down
> the Mac running the terminal emulator, the NetBSD box gets awfully
> confused. (By which I mean, it doesn't respond to network requests, and
> the serial terminal window is pretty much dead -- I have to press the
> interrupt switch and type 'reboot'.)

Weird. What exactly is the terminal emulator mac doing on shutdown? It
stays sick even if you re-connect the terminal?

> I think this is related to the fact that I'm running a getty on that
> serial port, and it gets lost when the connected serial port powers
> down. Do I even need to be running that getty, if I've set the serial
> console option in the Booter?

You need to be running that getty. Otherwise the system'll come up and you
won't be able to log in. Setting serial console in the booter tells the
kernel where the console is, it doesn't tell init (the thing which gives
login prompts) where it is. :-)

> Once I get this last thing straightened out, I'm more than happy to put
> together a little HOWTO on setting up a serial console. It's much
> simpler than the notes on macbsd.com would suggest, with the changes in
> the 1.3 gettytab format and recent Booters...

Cool.

Take care,

Bill