Configuring the Keyboard ?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Fri, Dec 10, 2004 at 05:16:10PM -0500, Henry Spencer wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Dec 2004, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> > For example, sending break on the serial console of a sun drops you to
> > the boot monitor prompt (even with the OS running), you can then reset
> > or 'go' to continue where it was.  Break isn't a character, it's a state
> > on the serial line, hence it's a great interrupt that applications
> > normally shouldn't expect to be able to use.
> 
> And using it to drop the machine into the boot monitor is a *really* bad
> idea.  Because if whatever's connected to that serial console loses power,
> even momentarily, or if the serial cable is disconnected, even
> momentarily... your Sun drops into boot monitor.  Unless somebody who
> knows what he's doing is handy, this is effectively a crash. 

That is correct.  Disconnect the cable from the serial console when not
using it on a sun. :)

> Yes, I speak from experience.
> 
> The right way to do this is to use a signal which *can't* be confused with
> untoward physical events on the line.  DEC servers used to answer to
> control-P, but had a front-console switch that could be used to disable
> this if/when you didn't want them to listen.

That's a good solution.

Lennart Sorensen
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml