[syslinux] extlinux 6.03 serial console not responding to input

[Ady]

> Hi Ady,
> 
> On Sun, May 17, 2015 at 09:11:25PM +0300, Ady via Syslinux wrote:
> > Are you sure the issue is related to the serial directive / console?
> 
> Just to be clear, the boot menu displays properly on the IPMI SOL serial
> console, and the system boots up fine.  It's just that it doesn't
> respond to any user input.  As a result, I cannot boot anything other
> than the default selection.
> 
 
(snip)
 
> 
> > Have you tested the serial directive / console without using the UI 
> > directive nor a menu?
> > 
> > For the latter, I mean something like:
> > 
> > SERIAL 0 57600 0x003
> > DEFAULT Linux1
> > TIMEOUT 100
> > LABEL Linux1
> > LINUX mykernel1
> > APPEND myoptions1
> > LABEL Linux2
> > LINUX mykernel2
> > APPEND myoptions2
> 
 
(snip)
 
> I tried this.  I also added "prompt 1", and it printed a "boot:"
> prompt, but it doesn't seem to respond to anything that I type.
> 
> To reiterate, this exact same configuration was working perfectly
> using extlinux 4.05.
> 
> > Have you tried using also the CONSOLE and/or NOHALT directives?
> 
> I just patched my extlinux.conf like so:
> 
> bash$ head extlinux.conf
> serial 0 115200 0x003
> ui menu.c32
> menu title Telemetry ExtLinux Boot Menu
> timeout 100
> NOHALT 1
> CONSOLE 0
> 
> label Linux1
>     menu label Fedora21-x86_64 3.19.7-200.fc21
>     kernel /vmlinuz-3.19.7-200.fc21.x86_64
> 
> It still does not respond to keyboard input.
> 
 
I don't know whether the CONSOLE and NOHALT directives shouldn't rather 
be introduced immediately after the SERIAL directive (when they are 
used).
In theory, only the SERIAL directive is recommended to be the first one 
in the configuration file, but considering that all 3 directives are 
related to the serial output, I would also say that, when those 
directives are used, I would use them right after the SERIAL directive, 
with it being the very first one.

Changing the location of these 2 directives in the cfg file might not 
have any effect (in theory), but, as mentioned, the serial behavior has 
proven to be not exactly "consistent" across every setup.

Additionally, I would guess that you are using a boot menu with more 
than one entry, but since your emails are referencing only one label 
directive in your tests, I thought I should better ask...

Are you testing with only one LABEL entry in the configuration file?

This might sound strange, and it might have no effect on the behavior 
you are seeing anyway, but having only one label present in the 
configuration file affects the behavior of certain directives. By 
extension, it might also affect certain input keys.
 
> > Have you tried using official upstream pre-built binaries from 
> > kernel.org?
> 
> I have not.  Is it conceivable that Fedora is shipping a botched copy?
> The Fedora source RPM includes a single patch:
>    0001-Add-install-all-target-to-top-side-of-HAVE_FIRMWARE.patch
> This adds some targets to the Makefile.
 
We have seen building-interaction issues before, so testing with 
official upstream pre-built binaries as already included in the 
official archives downloaded from kernel.org is part of a regular 
troubleshooting process.

I doubt it would make a difference in this situation, and I am not 
surprised that Syslinux is not responding to input keys in some serial 
console, but until the upstream official pre-built binaries are tested 
too, I would tend to think that there is no way to really discard a 
building-interaction issue.

In any case, please remember to replace all the Syslinux-related files 
that are in use/test, not just the bootloader file, so to avoid 
version-mismatch errors.


Regards,
Ady.
 
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