Posted by dopehouse on Fri 19 Aug 2005 at 13:55
I've got an old pentium 120 with no graphics card and I want to install Debian via serial console.
I typed 'linux console=ttyS0,9600n8' blindly on the bootprompt. But the only result was, that the kernel loaded and stopped.
I searched the web for a howto but found nothing that helps.
[ Parent ]
[ Parent ]
Reading the Remote Serial Console HOWTO might be useful..
If you can make the machine boot without the screen then that's a good start.
After that how are you trying to connect? Presumably you have a serial cable and minicom connected to it upon another host?
Steve
-- Steve.org.uk
[ Parent ]
[ Parent ]
The only time I ever used a serial install was on a Sun Netra, and I used the network booting "business card" ISO image.
If you have access to CD-ROM but not the bandwidth for a full ISO download you might be able to try that.
Steve
-- Steve.org.uk
[ Parent ]
[ Parent ]
[ Parent ]
[ Parent ]
[ Parent ]
[ Parent ]
[ Parent ]
My impression is that the stock debian kernels in sarge (including the ones from the floppies) all have support for serial consoles already. Maybe i should test that first, though...
ok, i did a bit of testing, thanks to qemu!
i downloaded the floppies from here, and modified the contents of boot.img. The only file i changed was /syslinux.cfg, and i made its contents look like this:
serial 0 9600
display syslinux.txt
default linux
F1 f1.txt
F2 f2.txt
F3 f3.txt
F4 f4.txt
F5 f5.txt
F6 f6.txt
F7 f7.txt
F8 f8.txt
F9 f9.txt
F0 f10.txt
label linux
kernel linux
append vga=normal initrd=initrd.gz ramdisk_size=1838 root=/dev/rd/0 dev\
fs=mount,dall rw console=ttyS0,9600n8 --
label expert
kernel linux
append DEBCONF_PRIORITY=low vga=normal initrd=initrd.gz ramdisk_size=18\
38 root=/dev/rd/0 devfs=mount,dall rw console=ttyS0,9600n8 --
prompt 1
timeout 0
I know, 9600 bps isn't terribly speedy, but i don't know qemu or syslinux well enough to know if they'll support different speeds, and 9600 is basically guaranteed to work.
After making the change to the file within the bootdisk image, i saved out the newly tweaked diskimage as sboot.img. Then i fired up qemu with the following command:
qemu -fda sboot.img -nographic -serial stdioThis emulates a machine with no graphics card, uses stdin and stdout to emulate the first serial line, and puts sboot.img as the first floppy drive (note that it's my modified sboot.img, not the original boot.img). Everything worked for me. When it prompted me for the root disk, i just did the following (from outside of qemu, of course):
cp sboot.img sboot-sav.img dd if=root.img of=sboot.imgThis saves a copy of sboot.img (should i want it later), and "swaps disks" for qemu. You won't need to do anything that goofy for working with actual floppy disks.
In another experiment, I also tried inserting DEBIAN_FRONTEND=text. i prefer the text frontend over the default newt for serial installs because it is much quicker (fewer bps needed). You can read up a bit about the frontends in the debian-installer manual. But, alas, it looks like the stock floppy disk images don't have that alternate frontend. maybe it was removed for size concerns? i'd certainly be interested in learning how to make a customized serial-console floppy set.
Good luck with this project! And post back here with the results of your labors!
[ Parent ]
[ Parent ]
[ Parent ]
I do not think so.
[ Parent ]