network based console?

Thomas Doerfler (nt) Thomas.Doerfler at imd-systems.de
Fri Sep 12 19:23:16 UTC 2008


Hi,

just to throw in my two cents: wouldn't it be possible to establish the
pseudo-tty driver as "console" replacement? Iam sure this needs some
tinkering, but might be worth a try.

Thomas.


Till Straumann schrieb:
> If you want to redirect your system console to a TCP/IP socket
> then you have to consider a few gotchas:
> 
>  - 'printk' will never be possible; printk normally uses a polling
>    driver for the serial port enabling it to be called everywhere
>    (w/o task context, from an ISR, before system is up etc.).
>    Unless you have a second networking
>    IF and implement a special polling driver + protocol stack there
>    you're not going to have printk.
> 
>  - you should be able to replace fds 0,1,2 with a TCP socket so
>    that all stdio goes over that connection.
> 
>  - HOWEVER: the RTEMS file-system per se is not thread-safe
>    and RTEMS sockets are not. Therefore, you'd need to somehow
>    add locking; so you'd probably have to write a small 'driver'
>    wrapping a mutex lock/unlock pair around read/write from/to
>    the socket.
> 
>  - NOTE: RTEMS/newlib's FILE buffers are global, unprotected
>    objects and sharing them among threads is not safe (unless
>    you add locking yourself).
>    BUT: the stdin/stdout/stderr streams/buffers are
>    exceptional: every thread has it's own set of 3 buffers (all
>    sharing the underlying file descriptors 0,1,2).
> 
> HTH
> -- Till
> 
> Gene Smith wrote:
>> Right now my stdin and stdout operations go in/out the serial port. 
>> However, my serial port *must* go away since it is multiplexed with a 
>> more essential function that replaces it. However, my ethernet tcp/ip is 
>> working well now. Is it possible to setup a remote terminal using tcp/ip 
>> that will act as stdin/stdout for my board running rtems? This would 
>> mainly be for debug or control purposes and probably not kept in the 
>> final version.
>>
>> In the past, I have used syslog to record debug messages on a remote 
>> system (output only) via UDP. I see mention of a telnetd for rtems that 
>> might allow me to connect to the rtems board but not sure that the 
>> remote telnet terminal functions the same as the remote serial terminal 
>> (ie, gtkterm, minicom, etc), i.e., printf's output to it and keystroke 
>> are input back to rtems.
>>
>> I expect this is all bound in with termios and the console driver and 
>> network driver but not sure how it all ties together or if what I want 
>> is possible. I will keep looking. But any advance information or 
>> comments would be appreciated.
>>
>> -gene
>>
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>> rtems-users at rtems.com
>> http://rtems.rtems.org/mailman/listinfo/rtems-users
>>   
> 
> 
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