| -b | Translate Ctrl-C to ALT_BREAK (CR + ‘~’ + Ctrl-B) on gdb(1) port. |
| -r | Replay old buffer on connection. |
| -v | Verbose debug output. Multiple -v options increase verbosity. |
| -w | Listen on a wildcard address rather than localhost. |
| -R | Read-only. Do not write anything to the dcons(4) buffer. |
| -T | Enable ad-hoc workaround for the TELNET protocol to remove unnecessary byte sequences. It should be set when you access dconschat using telnet(1). |
| -1 | One-shot. Read available buffer, then exit. This implies the -r option. |
| -h hz | Specify polling rate. The default value is 100. |
| -C console_port |
| | Specify the console port. The default value is 0 (stdin/stdout). |
| -G gdb_port |
| | Specify gdb(1) port. The default value is -1 (disabled). |
| -M core |
| | Specify core file. |
| -N system |
| | Specify system file such as /boot/kernel/kernel. |
| -t target_eui64 |
| | Specify the 64-bit extended unique identifier of the target, and use FireWire to access remote dcons(4). |
| -a address |
| | Specify the physical I/O address of the dcons(4) buffer. See dcons(4) for details. If this option is not specified, dconschat tries to get the address from the Configuration ROM on the target. You are supposed to enable dcons_crom(4) on the target to omit this option. |
| -u bus_num |
| | Specify FireWire bus number. The default is 0. |
|
EXAMPLES
To use dconschat with FireWire for remote dcons(4), you have to specify the EUI64 of the target. You can obtain EUI64 by running fwcontrol(8) without options. The first EUI64 is of the host running fwcontrol(8) and others on the bus follow.
# fwcontrol
2 devices (info_len=2)
node EUI64status
1 77-66-55-44-33-22-11-00 0
0 00-11-22-33-44-55-66-77 1
The EUI64 does not change unless you change the hardware as the ethernet address.
Now we can run dconschat.
# dconschat -br -G 12345 -t 00-11-22-33-44-55-66-77
You will get console output of the target and login prompt if a getty(8) is running on dcons(4). You can break to DDB with ALT_BREAK (CR + ‘~’ + Ctrl-B) if DDB and ALT_BREAK_TO_DEBUGGER are enabled in the target kernel. To quit the session, type CR + ‘~’ + ‘.’ in the console port.
Using gdb(1) port is almost the same as remote gdb(1) over serial line except using TCP/IP instead of /dev/cu*. See "On-line Kernel Debugging Using Remote GDB" section of "The FreeBSD Developers Handbook" and gdb(4) for details.
% gdb -k kernel.debug
(kgdb) target remote :12345
Once gdb(1) is attached and you specified the -b option to dconschat, typing Ctrl-C in gdb(1) causes a break to debugger.
The following command gets the console log from the crash dump:
# dconschat -1 -M vmcore.0 -N kernel.0
If you want access to the console using telnet(1), try the following:
# dconschat -rTC 5555 &
# telnet localhost 5555
You may want to keep logging console output of several machines. conserver-com in the Ports collection may help you. Insert the following lines in conserver.cf:
console local {
master localhost;
type exec;
exec /usr/sbin/dconschat -rh 25;
}
console remote {
master localhost;
type exec;
exec /usr/sbin/dconschat -rh 25 -t 00-11-22-33-44-55-66-77;
}
SEE ALSO
gdb(1), telnet(1), kvm(3), dcons(4), dcons_crom(4), ddb(4), firewire(4), fwohci(4), gdb(4), eui64(5), fwcontrol(8)
AUTHORS
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