I use serial consoles on all my OpenBSD servers for remote serial
access to the machines, both during initial install via pxeboot, and
later on in regular use after the install.
I'm currently running either 4.2 or 4.1 on all my machines.
The FAQ states:
Only the first serial port (com0) is supported for console on
amd64 and i386
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq7.html#SerCon
Why is this the case?
Why does OpenBSD care which serial port I use?
Will it simply not work if I specify "set tty com1" in /etc/boot.conf ?
I ask because my servers of choice are made by Rackable Systems, and
their default configuration
is to route the serial port known to as com1 to a special RJ-45
connector, that also supports BIOS redirection, and even serial access
to power cycle the machine.
Having my OpenBSD servers use that for the console would be ideal.
FYI, my Solaris10/x86 servers happily use that port for the console,
and there is no need to
turn off Continue Console Redirection after POST, as also recommend in
the OpenBSD FAQ:
Some BIOSs have an option to "Continue Console Redirection after
POST" (Power On Self Test),
this should be set to "OFF", so the boot loader and the kernel
can handle their own console.
I'd very much appreciate any insight into these questions.
Best regards,
Don
