Installing Leap via Serial Cable (i.e. no VGA/HDMI)

Hi all,

I can probably just use an embedded Linux distro, but I would like to see if I can modify the ISO so the output is on the terminal instead of via VGA or HDMI. What I want to do is use the device as an AP with hostapd.

It is a Netgate 2440 with pfSense installed. I bought it a few years go with an Atheros WLan card capable of 5GHz (not on BSD though.) The problem is that BSD has godawful wlan drivers, so I have been struggling with the WiFi all these years. I bought a fanless PC and installed Sophos UTM on it, and I would like to re-purpose the Netgate as an AP. It has a 64bit Atom processor and sufficient RAM so a “normal” flavor of Linux should work. As the device is serial only, I need to install Leap via serial cable. It didn’t seem to work (though I may have done something wrong…) There are instructions for Centos5 to modify the ISO for serial, but I would rather use Leap. Does anyone know if I can install Leap via serial cable?

Hi
Based on the RPI install, add the following boot options in grub;


plymouth.enable=0 console=ttyS0,115200n8 console=tty

Thanks. But look what I found in the grub.cfg file:

# On EFI systems we can only have graphics *or* serial, so allow the user# to switch between the two
hiddenentry 'Text mode' --hotkey 't' {
  set textmode=true
  terminal_output console
}

I will try it tomorrow, but why hide the entry?

Otherwise, I did not see way to change the boot parameters when I tried to install.

Hi
Press the ‘e’ key to edit the linux line, then F10 to boot…

The “e” and F keys do not work. However, if I type linux and

plymouth.enable=0 console=ttyS1,115200n8 console=tty

(Yes, ttyS1 works…)

It begin to boot. But it hangs at different places in the install. Usually it hangs with the following error:



udevd[198]: specified group 'input' unknown

It did get past that once, but it hung again.

Hi
Try without the n8 and with n81 instead, else maybe drop the speed down?

The speed etc. are hard coded into the BIOS, so I get the usual ASCII etc.

Thanks for the help!

On Tue 14 Feb 2017 08:06:01 PM CST, Thiudans wrote:

malcolmlewis;2812382 Wrote:
> Hi
> Try without the n8 and with n81 instead, else maybe drop the speed
> down?

The speed etc. are hard coded into the BIOS, so I get the usual ASCII
etc.

Thanks for the help!

Hi
Maybe the driver (cp210x) isn’t loaded or going missing, I see on the
documentation it’s 115200 8n1 Flow Control off for a 2440.

What serial device are you using for the connection? What terminal
program as well (I use minicom)? The only serial stuff these days for
me is RPI and if I dig my SunBlade out…


Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE Leap 42.1|GNOME 3.16.2|4.1.36-44-default
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?
I think these are the hardware specs
https://netgate.com/products/sg-2440.html

AFAIK typically serial ports are always enabled by the BIOS (or enabled in the BIOS), so you shouldn’t need any special GRUB settings
(But, maybe I’ll learn something new here. But that was my experience setting up x86 machines years ago).

This should be a very generic issue to solve,
There are probably plenty of articles on headless installations on the Internet that can serve as guides to what you need to do.

An RPi or similar architecture has a different boot architecture (uboot seems to be highly customized and embedded in the image) so setting that up is different… but according to the hardware specs above, this is an Atom (Intel) device which is more likely closer to conventional Desktops and Servers and less like ARM devices.

TSU

I connect via /dev/ttyUSB0. Originally, to get cp210x to load, I had to unload a braille module. (LOL!)

I also use minicom.

Centos 7 works fine.

Yes, Atom is basically a typical amd64 architecture. I can install Ubuntu and Centos 7.

Yes,
Simply configure a machine running a terminal client and connect to the serial port (either an RS-232 or if a USB, then you should use a USB to RS-232 serial converter) and see if anything is detected. If not, then check your BIOS settings to see if anything needs to be set properly.

Should not make a diff what distro you’re using, only that you are installing an image built for amd64, what I’m describing should be a lower level functionality (BIOS) not dependent on any higher level functionality.

Of course also,
You can also install blindly. Set up something like AutoYast or script that answers all interactive questions automatically or apply an image that is known to work, then boot the machine up and see if it’s already fully running using something like SSH or VNC over your network connection.

TSU

OK I got it to install reliably.

What I did is type:

linux textmode=1 console=ttyS1,115200n8

https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Installation_with_little_memory

The ncurses inteface is not that good on this particular console, but I was able to work around it.

Congrats.

Can I ask what system board you’re installing on?

TSU