HVM - BIOS serial console redirection?

HVM - BIOS serial console redirection?

[Nate Carlson]

I realized this is probably better suited for the devel list.. basically, 
is there any way in the BOCHS bios to enable 'Serial Console Redirection', 
where you see the BIOS contents over the serial line?

Windows 2003's 'Emergency Management Services' console (which allows you 
to do installs and fix stuff over the serial line) requires this to 
activate.. piece of crap.

It'd also be nice for *NIX installs on HVM, where you don't want to deal 
with SDL or VNC.

Thanks much!  :)

------------------------------------------------------------------------
| nate carlson | natecars@natecarlson.com | http://www.natecarlson.com |
|       depriving some poor village of its idiot since 1981            |
------------------------------------------------------------------------

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 23 May 2006 12:24:46 -0500 (CDT)
From: Nate Carlson <natecars@natecarlson.com>
To: xen-users@lists.xensource.com
Subject: [Xen-users] HVM: Emergency Management Services for W2K3 under Xen
     HVM?

It'd be nice to be able to use the "Emergency Management Services" for Windows 
2003 under Xen.. apparently, to use them, however, the BIOS has to support 
serial redirection. Is there any way to get the BOCHS bios to support serial 
redirection? I haven't been able to find anything.

Thanks!

------------------------------------------------------------------------
| nate carlson | natecars@natecarlson.com | http://www.natecarlson.com |
|       depriving some poor village of its idiot since 1981            |
------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: HVM - BIOS serial console redirection?

[Andrew D. Ball]

Have you tried

serial = 'pty'

in the domU's configuration?  This makes the domU's virtual serial port 
look like the console of a paravirtualized domU, so you can use 'xm 
console' and 'xm create -c' on it.

I'm not sure what you mean by the BIOS contents ...

Good luck.
Andrew

Nate Carlson wrote:
> I realized this is probably better suited for the devel list.. 
> basically, is there any way in the BOCHS bios to enable 'Serial Console 
> Redirection', where you see the BIOS contents over the serial line?
> 
> Windows 2003's 'Emergency Management Services' console (which allows you 
> to do installs and fix stuff over the serial line) requires this to 
> activate.. piece of crap.
> 
> It'd also be nice for *NIX installs on HVM, where you don't want to deal 
> with SDL or VNC.
> 
> Thanks much!  :)
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> | nate carlson | natecars@natecarlson.com | http://www.natecarlson.com |
> |       depriving some poor village of its idiot since 1981            |
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Tue, 23 May 2006 12:24:46 -0500 (CDT)
> From: Nate Carlson <natecars@natecarlson.com>
> To: xen-users@lists.xensource.com
> Subject: [Xen-users] HVM: Emergency Management Services for W2K3 under Xen
>     HVM?
> 
> It'd be nice to be able to use the "Emergency Management Services" for 
> Windows 2003 under Xen.. apparently, to use them, however, the BIOS has 
> to support serial redirection. Is there any way to get the BOCHS bios to 
> support serial redirection? I haven't been able to find anything.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> | nate carlson | natecars@natecarlson.com | http://www.natecarlson.com |
> |       depriving some poor village of its idiot since 1981            |
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-users mailing list
> Xen-users@lists.xensource.com
> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-devel mailing list
> Xen-devel@lists.xensource.com
> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel

Re: HVM - BIOS serial console redirection?

[Nate Carlson]

On Tue, 30 May 2006, Andrew D. Ball wrote:
> Have you tried
>
> serial = 'pty'
>
> in the domU's configuration?  This makes the domU's virtual serial port 
> look like the console of a paravirtualized domU, so you can use 'xm 
> console' and 'xm create -c' on it.

Yes - it doesn't display the "virtual BIOS" stuff on the serial port, 
though.

> I'm not sure what you mean by the BIOS contents ...

When you boot a HVM-based domU in SDL or VNC mode, it starts up with the 
screen that says:

"Plex86/Bochs VGABios current-cvs 22 May 2006
This VGA/VBE Bios is released under the GNU LGPG

<...>"

If this could be redirected over the serial line, I believe it would be 
what W2K3 tries to detect..

------------------------------------------------------------------------
| nate carlson | natecars@natecarlson.com | http://www.natecarlson.com |
|       depriving some poor village of its idiot since 1981            |
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: HVM - BIOS serial console redirection?

[Nick Craig-Wood]

Nate Carlson <natecars@natecarlson.com> wrote:
>  On Tue, 30 May 2006, Andrew D. Ball wrote:
> > Have you tried
> >
> > serial = 'pty'
> >
> > in the domU's configuration?  This makes the domU's virtual serial port 
> > look like the console of a paravirtualized domU, so you can use 'xm 
> > console' and 'xm create -c' on it.
> 
>  Yes - it doesn't display the "virtual BIOS" stuff on the serial port, 
>  though.
> 
> > I'm not sure what you mean by the BIOS contents ...
> 
>  When you boot a HVM-based domU in SDL or VNC mode, it starts up with the 
>  screen that says:
> 
>  "Plex86/Bochs VGABios current-cvs 22 May 2006
>  This VGA/VBE Bios is released under the GNU LGPG
> 
> <...>"
> 
>  If this could be redirected over the serial line, I believe it would be 
>  what W2K3 tries to detect..

We've been trying the same thing - to get the Win2003 serial
management to work under Xen.

If the BIOS doesn't support console redirection then you can turn the
SAC/EMS on with bootcfg.exe.  We've done that but it still doesn't
work.

We've been using serial='pty' all along.

However looking at the serial port configuration in the hardware
manager I can see that the serial port doesn't seem to be working (the
usual windows exclamation mark).

It claims a conflict in the IO range from 0x3F8 to 0x3FE with the
"Standard PC" device which seems to be a place holder for the HAL.

I guess if we could fix that out it would work, but we haven't figured
it out yet...

I could manually set the port to the COM2 IO/IRQ range which appear to
be free.

-- 
Nick Craig-Wood <nick@craig-wood.com> -- http://www.craig-wood.com/nick