Presenting GNU/Hurd... what about serial console support?

[Ivan Shmakov]

>>>>> "AB" == Arne Babenhauserheide <arne_bab@web.de> writes:

[...]

 AB> And he was quite impressed, since he could directly see the
 AB> potential in that.

 AB> Even though I did it over X11-forwarding with a possible command
 AB> rate of 2 per minute or so.

        What purpose did X11 actually serve in this case?

        When running Linux-based systems in Qemu, I usually configure
        Qemu to ``connect'', say, COM1 (on guest) and /dev/tty (on
        host), while passing `console=ttyS0' to Linux, like:

$ qemu -no-kqemu \
      -nographic -monitor null -serial /dev/tty \
      -cdrom  .../debian-4.0-r0-etch-2007-04-07T11\:40-i386-binary-1.iso \
      -hda    .../target-in-qemu.image \
      -kernel 
.../debian-4.0-r0-etch-2007-04-07-i386-binary-1/install.386/vmlinuz \
      -initrd 
.../debian-4.0-r0-etch-2007-04-07-i386-binary-1/install.386/initrd.gz \
      -append 'console=ttyS0 priority=low netcfg/disable_dhcp=true 
DEBIAN_FRONTEND=text' 
Linux version 2.6.18-4-486 (Debian 2.6.18.dfsg.1-11) (waldi@debian.org) (gcc 
version 4.1.2 20061115 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-21)) #1 Wed Feb 21 15:25:16 
UTC 2007
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
 BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)
 BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000000e8000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 0000000008000000 (usable)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000fffc0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
128MB LOWMEM available.
DMI not present or invalid.
ACPI: PM-Timer IO Port: 0xb008
...

        In particular, this configuration allows for Qemu to be started
        from within the `screen' session, with all the benefits it gives
        (the ability to detach the session and attach it possibly from a
        different terminal, logging, scroll buffer, etc.)  Besides, the
        speed penalty for the serial port emulation seems to be much
        lower than the one for the VGA emulation.

        I vaguely recall that GNU Mach had no (or broken?) support for
        serial console, does it still apply?  I had planned to suggest
        GNU/Hurd as a topic for the (not yet started) local ``On
        software'' students' meeting, and the ability for a GNU/Hurd
        system to be run with ``virtual'' serial console (as provided by
        Qemu) could become quite handy.

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