[Voyage-linux] Serial Console Tip for Soekris net4801

[Joe.Kelly]

I'm not sure if I should be posting this here, or in the wiki, or both.
Anyway, here's a tip for people that have a Soekris net4801 and want to
monitor the boot process over a serial connection without getting garbage
characters.

Last week I installed voyage-0.2pre2 on a Soekris net4801. When I monitored
the boot process over a serial connection using 9600-N-8-1 for the
connection settings (as recommended in the Voyage readme file), I saw only
garbage characters BEFORE LILO took over. So, I looked in the Soekris manual
and it told me to use 19200-N-8-1. However, when I tried those settings,
this time I saw garbage characters AFTER LILO took over.

The problem is that the Soekris BIOS and Voyage Linux should both use the
same settings. I found two ways to do this:
1) Use the Soekris monitor's "set" command, OR
2) Change the settings in /etc/lilo.conf.voyage

I chose to use method 2 (Why? I don't know. Method 1 should work fine too).
Specifically, I replaced all instances of "9600n8" with "19200n8" in the
file /etc/lilo.conf.voyage.

This time when I booted, I got proper output, with no garbage characters,
from both the BIOS and Voyage Linux. The only minor glitch (which I can live
with) was that there was one line right when LILO started where the
characters were double printed. The line was:
LILLOO bboooott:: LLooaaddiinngg lliinnuuxx

Anyway, I thought I would share this tip.

Cheers,
Joe
A.k.a cyboc