Re: Support for serial console on legacy free machines

[Khalid Aziz <khalid@fc.hp.com>]

Andreas Dilger wrote:
> 
> OK, maybe I'm misunderstanding here, but even if I put in a PCI serial
> card in such a machine, can I get serial console support without ACPI?
> Not that it matters in my case, because there are no PCI slots on the
> motherboard either.
> 

AFAIK, you can not have console on a PCI serial port at this time. I
looked at it few months back and found out that PCI initialization
happens much too late for a serial console. It would take quite a bit of
work to get serial console working on PCI cards. PA-Linux faced the same
problem but they were able to get around it by using the firmware calls
to do console I/O. If serial console were working on PCI serial cards,
you wouldn't need ACPI to use it.

-- 
Khalid

====================================================================
Khalid Aziz                              Linux Systems Operation R&D
(970)898-9214                                        Hewlett-Packard
khalid@fc.hp.com                                    Fort Collins, CO