Re: another xen-kernel UEFI story

Hello,

The ASUS P8H77M-Pro has an internal serial connector onboard. Lizbeth 
should get a DB9 male slot bracket with 10 pin internal connector and a 
null modem cable.

Regards, Gerd

On 2021-08-12 18:45, Roger Pau Monné wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 12, 2021 at 03:52:55PM +0200, Lizbeth Mutterhunt, Ph.D wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Op 12 aug. 2021, om 09:01 heeft Roger Pau Monné <royger@freebsd.org> het volgende geschreven:
>>>
>>> Adding the freebsd-xen mailing list again.
>>>
>>> On Wed, Aug 11, 2021 at 12:48:55AM +0200, Lizbeth Mutterhunt, Ph.D wrote:
>>>> Op Tuesday, 10 August 2021 15:32:45 CEST schreef u:
>>>>> On Tue, Aug 10, 2021 at 02:41:34PM +0200, lizbethmutterhunt@gmail.com
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> Op Tuesday, 10 August 2021 09:38:58 CEST schreef u:
>>>>>>> On Mon, Aug 09, 2021 at 05:23:27PM +0200, lizbethmutterhunt@gmail.com
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>> could someone pleas check this link:
>>>>>>>>
>>>> https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/xen-kernel-doesnt-start-at-all.8155
>>>>>>>> 6/
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> does anyone has another idea then duplicating CURRENT and RELEASE
>>>> via
>>>>>>>> Virtualbox or qemu?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> XEN simply doesn't boot after setting xen_kernel on in
>>>>>>>> /boot/loader.conf,
>>>>>>>> we tried different ways but none worked. It's loading [text],
>>>> [data],
>>>>>>>> [syms] and the preconfig but afterwards there's just the
>>>> reset-button
>>>>>>>> option, because XEN doesn't boot.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> any help appreciated!
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> hello royger!
>>>> hija!
>>>>
>> Hello Roger!
>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> There are a couple of things to look at, first of all, do you have a
>>>>>>> serial console attached to the box?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I guess so, because there are two possibilities to start from via
>>>> primary
>>>>>> and secodary console!
>>>>>
>>>>> The serial console is a port (usually a RS-232) on your box that you
>>>>> attach a cable to and connect to another computer, so you can get
>>>>> early text debug output:
>>>>>
>>>>> https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/s/serial-console.htm
>>>>> https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Remote-Serial-Console-HOWTO/intro-why.html
>>>> Basically I know the RS-232 "live" in the 80s, and I was soldering a earth-
>>>> cable to connect two PCs without any swith via a deviate of Midnight
>>>> Commander. So first thought, enable serial port in bios; computer crashing
>>>> at
>>>> xen and crashes when allocating the re0. so disabled again!
>>>
>>> I 'm afraid I'm a bit lost here, so your computer does have some kind
>>> of serial port?
>>
>> No, no RS-232 output of course but a parallel and serial console in the BIOS! I activated the serial port and got in troubles with booting; beasties logo has been disabled, so no boot menu to unset the xen_xernel at boot prompt. XEN never booted anyway.
>>
>>> Do you mean that when you enable the serial port in BIOS (I assume a
>>> Serial Over LAN)
>> Yup!
>>> the re0 network interface stops working.
>> Yes, at the dhclient allocations it stops immediately with no output or debugger info at all. Also the keyboard was disabled and I couldn’t press CTRL+C for avoiding DHCPREQUEST.
> 
> I think it would be better to get Xen out of the picture here, and
> initially focus on getting a serial console working with plain
> FreeBSD.
> 
> Once you have that it should be trivial to attempt to boot
> Xen and get the output on the serial, but first you need to have it
> working properly with plain FreeBSD.
> 
> The handbook contains a good section about how to get it working:
> 
> https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/serialcomms/#serialconsole-setup
> 
> But it seems like you will need some help from your hardware vendor in
> order to figure out how to enable Serial Over LAN properly on the
> firmware.
> 
> Note that you should be able to get the output of both the FreeBSD
> loader and kernel on the serial console.
> 
> Regards, Roger.
>