Vick Khera
2018-05-16 12:48:06 UTC
I run pfSense on an official pfSense branded C2758 system. It has a BMC
controller that permits me to use a serial over LAN to COM2. In order to
make the system console connect to COM2, the following line needs to be
added to loader.conf or loader.conf.local:
comconsole_port="0x2F8"
in addition to enabling the serial console via the GUI.
I've run it this way for years with prior versions of pfSense. It seems now
with version 2.4.3 (possibly earlier 2.4.x, not sure) upon reboot the
/boot/loader.conf.local file gets deleted. Thus the symptoms are that you
create the file, reboot and get serial console, but the file gets removed
during the boot. So on your next boot, no console over SoL.
Ideally, there would be a menu on the GUI for serial console to select the
COM port, but I requested that forever ago and it doesn't seem to be
important enough to get implemented.
The /etc/inc/pfsense-utils.inc file appears to try to filter the
loader.conf.local to remove duplicate settings and delete it if it ends up
empty. This is done by the function load_loader_conf() which seems like it
does the right thing but clearly it is not including the above line and
thus the file gets deleted. It is easily reproduced by just putting that
single line above into the file and rebooting pfSense.
controller that permits me to use a serial over LAN to COM2. In order to
make the system console connect to COM2, the following line needs to be
added to loader.conf or loader.conf.local:
comconsole_port="0x2F8"
in addition to enabling the serial console via the GUI.
I've run it this way for years with prior versions of pfSense. It seems now
with version 2.4.3 (possibly earlier 2.4.x, not sure) upon reboot the
/boot/loader.conf.local file gets deleted. Thus the symptoms are that you
create the file, reboot and get serial console, but the file gets removed
during the boot. So on your next boot, no console over SoL.
Ideally, there would be a menu on the GUI for serial console to select the
COM port, but I requested that forever ago and it doesn't seem to be
important enough to get implemented.
The /etc/inc/pfsense-utils.inc file appears to try to filter the
loader.conf.local to remove duplicate settings and delete it if it ends up
empty. This is done by the function load_loader_conf() which seems like it
does the right thing but clearly it is not including the above line and
thus the file gets deleted. It is easily reproduced by just putting that
single line above into the file and rebooting pfSense.