[PATCH] Boot-time entering prompt by typing "123" sequence rather than any button

[John Baldwin]

On Friday 06 November 2009 10:12:59 am Attilio Rao wrote:
> This patch adds the possibility to enter the prompt at boot time by
> typing the sequence of buttons "123" rather than a single button:
> http://www.freebsd.org/~attilio/Sandvine/STABLE_8/boot123/boot123.diff
> 
> This is useful in the cases where a serial console is likely going to
> be used which can carry on spourious character, leding to the prompt
> erroneously.
> This option is wrappered into the BOOT_PROMPT_123 option, in order to
> maintain the current POLA.
> This patch has been contributed back by Sandvine Incorporated.
> Please review.

This seems a bit hackish, but the patch is fine on technical grounds.  On 
machines where I have a serial console I tend to put "-Dh" in /boot.config 
(so I can choose an alternate loader if need be) and in that case boot2 would 
eat the extra input and pause during the boot process (I've had this happen 
occasionally).  This patch wouldn't help with that case.  Another suggestion 
made on IRC was to simply drain input at the start of boot2 or loader to 
avoid accepting early spurious input.  This won't help if you are dealing 
with noisy serial lines that are just spewing random garbage during the boot 
process however.

-- 
John Baldwin