Trouble getting serial support for "Live CD" in 9 installer

[Adam McDougall]

On 11/23/11 15:03, Garrett Cooper wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 11:12 AM, Adam McDougall<mcdouga9 at egr.msu.edu>  wrote:
>> I often use the serial console on my servers through ILOM remote console
>> access to install FreeBSD because it lets me cut and paste commands into a
>> live shell from install media.  Back with FreeBSD 8.x and previous, the
>> console worked as a dual console between the redirected VGA/keyboard console
>> and serial, all I had to do was drop to the loader prompt at the boot loader
>> menu to enter:
>>
>> set console=comconsole
>> set boot_serial=yes
>> boot
>>
>>  From then on, the VGA console was ignored until I rebooted.  But in 9.x
>> (currently trying 9.0-RC2 from the usb image), I have to interrupt an
>> earlier loader to use -h or -D to enable serial(dual) console support at
>> all.  I then enter the two variables above as I usually do, then specify my
>> terminal type (xterm), then choose "Live CD" which prints:
>> Updating motd: /etc/motd is not writable, update failed.
>> Configuring syscons: blanktime.
>> Starting cron.
>> Starting background file system checks in 60 seconds.
>>
>> Wed Nov 23 19:03:02 UTC 2011
>>
>> but then it prints the FreeBSD banner and spawns the login: prompt on the
>> VGA console instead.
>>
>> Is there something else I can set during the boot process to make this work?
>>   I could try modifying the configuration on the usb image to suit my site
>> but this is more modification than I required in the past and surprisingly
>> different.  Please let me know if I can provide more information or help in
>> some way.  Thanks.
>>
>> If I don't hear back in a few days or so, I'll make a PR.
>
> You'll need to change your device.hints and /etc/ttys.
> -Garrett
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Thanks.  This lead me to an even easier solution with no editing that 
should work with booting from CD and with previous versions:

1. Boot completely normally
2. Use the installer to drop to Live CD shell
3. execute: /usr/libexec/getty std.9600 ttyu0

This spawns a login prompt on the serial port ttyu0 which is essentially 
all I need.  I didn't seem to need to alter the device hints at all for 
my situation, and on a USB key I can mount -u -o rw / to edit one or 
more of /etc/ttys, /boot/loader.conf, /boot.config if I want to make it 
permanent for next time.