Re: boot problem

["William J. Earl" <wje@fir.engr.sgi.com>]

ralf@uni-koblenz.de writes:
 > On Wed, Jan 14, 1998 at 04:56:38PM -0800, William J. Earl wrote:
 > 
 > >  > Thinking about it, the kernel should only try to touch the gfx hardware
 > >  > at all, if the ARC environment variable ``console'' is unset.  If you
 > >  > want to run from a serial console, then the variable's value should be
 > >  > either ``d1'' or ``d2'' for the first rsp. second serial interface.
 > >  > I suppose IRIX just defaults to serial console because it knows that
 > >  > a Challenge S is headless or after a failed probe for gfx hardware.
 > > 
 > >      IRIX probes for the graphics card.  If the probe fails, it
 > > assumes this is not one.  If there is no graphics, or if console != g,
 > > it sets the system console to the serial port.  Note, however, that
 > > IRIX normally puts up an X login on the graphics head even if
 > > console=d and thus the console is on the serial port.  This seems
 > > like a reasonable approach for linux as well.
 > 
 > Indeed, this is how Linux will behave after the probe / console env
 > thing is fixed.  I assume your more than minimal necessary probe has the
 > purpose to make shut that the machine does not only have gfx but also
 > that the gfx found in the address space is not something else like the
 > XZ for example?
...

      Yes, that is correct.  Also, it means that the system will
come up with a serial console if the graphics board is completely dead.