Re: Can BIOS output be configured to print to a virtualized serial port?

Bjørn Mork
2011-07-08T21:33:47Z

Kenton Cabiness <kenton.cabiness@alcatel-lucent.com> writes:

> We are trying to configure a system using KVM as an abstraction layer
> to make our software more portable.
>
> We would like to configure our system so that the BIOS output (DHCP
> information in particular) is directed to the same pty as the console
> connection (ttyS0) so that this output can be logged and the boot
> process can be monitored.
>
> It seems that the BIOS (seabios) prints it's output to the graphical
> interface (which ends up being tty1), while the console is ttyS0 when
> a console interface is configured in the XML file.
>
> We are using RHEL 6.1, libvirt-0.8.7-18, virt-manager-0.8.6-4,
> seabios-0.6.1.2-3, and qemu-kvm-0.12.1.2-2.160.
>
> Is this possible or are we stuck with using using virt-manager (or
> some other VNC application) to monitor the initialization of the
> virtual machines?

You can use sgabios for this. See http://code.google.com/p/sgabios/

Bjørn