[H-GEN] RH modules (long)

[Paul Gearon]

> From:          Christopher Biggs <chris at stallion.oz.au>
> 
> ls -l /dev | grep ^c | grep " 4,"
> 
> will tell you:
> 
> Console and serial ports.

Ahh.  I didn't know it was refering to a device.  I guess the word 
"char" should have been a giveaway.

> /dev/console *IS* char-major-4.  
> 
> Init is trying to write "Init version blahquux starting." to
> /dev/console, but there's no such device.  It tries to load the
> module, and there's no such module.  Urk!

This explains much.  I only included a few lines from the 
/var/log/messages file so I didn't give the complete picture.  In 
fact init was sending out a VERY large stream of errors every 5 
minutes - coupled with lots of modprobe errors saying it couldn't 
find char-major-4.

> (When you want to stop kerneld/kmod trying to load a module that you
> don't have, put "alias char-major-mumble off" in /etc/conf.modules)

Done it.  Now the modprobe errors are gone.  Thank you!

> Is your console *working*?   You need *something* as console, even
> if it's only a serial port with no device connected.

Uhhhh... nope!  I figured (incorrectly) that since the machine can 
sense that it is running headless then it should know to do something 
more appropriate with the console.

> > Secondly, (and this one should be simple) how do I appropriately
> > redirect the console?  I've never had to do this before now.
> 
> try passing console=/dev/<someserialport> as a boot parameter.

Is there any way I can do that through silo.conf?  Or possibly 
change the console at some point during boot up?  I don't really want 
to lug the machine back to a keyboard and monitor if I can avoid it.

> Hmmm, I wonder if /dev/null works...?

Yup.  I assume you are being funny here?  I'm inconversant enough 
with these things to realise that I may not be aware that something 
like this can go wrong, so I can't be sure.  :o)


> From:          Martin Pool <mbp at meesha.humbug.org.au>
> >Does anybody know what >char-major-4 is? 
> 
> /usr/src/linux/./include/linux/major.h:22:#define TTY_MAJOR    4

Now if I only I knew to look in there!

> I suppose the sparc ttysuckers don't load if there's no screen attached.

This does seem to be the case.

> >Now this indicates 2 problems to me.  The first is that modprobe is 
> >trying to load char-major-4 and can't find it.  Then when it tries 
> >printing this to the console it can't find the console and init emits 
> >an error.
> 
> I agree.

Whew!  I hate giving my opinion on these things as it normally only 
shows how ignorant I am.

> >Firstly, does anyone know what char-major-4 is, and how I can remove 
> >the reference to it?
> 
> Try removing the mingettys on the terminals from /etc/inittab.  

That _would_ make sense, wouldn't it?

OK, now that I've done these I expect to only see the "init: 
open(/dev/console): No such device" error.  Once I work out what to 
do with the console I should have this figured out.

Thanks to both of you.

Paul


Paul Gearon
gearon at computer.org

Microsoft - Where every morning is the dawn of a new error.

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