# Problems booting nanobsd image - no output to serial console



## mix_room (Apr 18, 2010)

I have created a nanobsd image which I am attempting to boot. My only connection to the embedded machine, an Alix board http://pcengines.ch/alix3d2.htm, is by serial console. 

The serial console to bios works fine, but after the freebsd boot-loader I only see hash-marks. I attached a copy of the output below. The first line of gibberish is due to the BIOS having a different console speed setting. 


```
J644{Ã’|#>?Ã¤*beep*^#Ã¿Ã»Ã°Â²Ã°ÃºÃ»ÃŸÂ¸Ã½YfYÂ¶ÃˆÃ¶ÃÃ¬IÂ¿Ã™Â¿Â°
1  FreeBSD
2  FreeBSD

F6 PXE
Boot:  1 #################
```

I edited the /etc/ttys file to include the proper console

```
console "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600  unknown on secure"
```
changed the 'off' tag to 'on' for the dumb console and added 'set console="comconsole"' to /boot/loader.conf  as per http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/serialconsole-setup.html

Can anybody notice something that I have done incorrectly, or are there changes that were made to 8.0 which I have missed?

EDIT: http://blog.brixandersen.dk/?p=94 solved some of the problems. Now it seems to hang on the bootloader, the spinning '|/-\' sequence which normally shows up doesn't.


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## bsps (Apr 18, 2010)

*Display problem using console port in nanobsd when booting*

Hi
I have compiled nanobsd without changing anything in nanobsd.sh 
Then I copy _disk.full  to a compact flash using dd. 
I have soekris net5501. I connected the compact flash to net5501 and connected the console port to the computer. when I try to start net5501 It shows for me the "/" moving but after that nothing appeared
I think the problem from the console port setting in nanobsd but I donâ€™t know how can i solve it.   

any idea please?


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## mix_room (Apr 18, 2010)

I got the problem solved using http://www.bsdforen.de/showthread.php?t=21771 as hint. 

I added [cmd=""]customize_cmd cust_comconsole[/cmd] to my nanobsd conf-file. Now it seems to run. What the command does is to turn on getty on terminals, and turn it off on syscons devices, and then tells the loader to use the serial console early (wording borrowed from nanobsd.sh) 

Now I have my embedded 8.0-RELEASE-p2 running on the Alix machine.


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