Re: Defaulting serial communication to 115200 bps for FreeBSD 14

On Wed, Aug 16, 2023, 9:38 PM Dennis Clarke <dclarke@blastwave.org> wrote:

> On 8/16/23 22:28, Alexander Motin wrote:
> > On 16.08.2023 18:14, Dennis Clarke wrote:
> >> The default serial communications config on most telecom equipment that
> >> I have seen ( in the last forty years ) defaults to 9600 8n1. If people
> >> want something faster from FreeBSD then do the trivial :
> >>
> >>      set comconsole_speed="115200"
> >>      set console="comconsole"
> >>
> >> Is that not trivial enough?
> >
> > Except it is not a telecom equipment 40 years ago.  Even at 115200 that
> > I routinely use on my development systems I feel serial console output
> > affects verbose boot time and kernel console debugging output.  I also
> > have BIOS console redirection enabled on my systems, and I believe the
> > default there is also 115200, and even that is pretty slow.  I see no
> > point to stay compatible if it is unusable.
> >
>
> You seem to be missing the point.
>
> You need to make a configuration choice. You. Not the world. You.
>
> Edit your /boot/loader.conf and put in the lines above.
>
> Then be happy.
>
> --
> Dennis Clarke
> RISC-V/SPARC/PPC/ARM/CISC
> UNIX and Linux spoken
> GreyBeard and suspenders optional
>
> PS: a recent CISCO ASA fireware defaults to 9600 8n1. Same as a lot of
>      equipment.
>

Yes. Some tiny number of things has that as a default, an even larger
number of things have a default of 115200 or even faster. And have had that
default since the 90s. The whole point of defaults is that they reflect the
needs of the most people. FreeBSD's defaults were already starting to be
dated in 1.0...  today almost everyone changes the defaults to the new
value we are advocating. This is to make FreeBSD more useful out of the box
to more people. To turn your argument around: people wanting the old
defaults can configure their systems easily enough. If we look purely at
the numbers, vastly fewer people withh be inconvenienced at 115200 than at
9600. People can still use 9600... that's likely never going away... this
is just a more sensible default.

Warner

>