Serial Console & TTYs

assuming you have a apu2|apu3|apu4 from pcengines or a virtual machine running on KVM/Qemu. And you don’t have vga/dvi/hdmi whatever kind of video output. of course, you can install and run OpenBSD (or Linux) on this boxes.

Prepare USB Stick

write openbsdxx.img to an USB Stick. On MacOS, you can use Balena Etcher for example.

boot.conf

if you wanna install from an USB Stick, set the correct Port and Speed before booting.

boot> stty com0 115200
boot> set tty com0

or put these settings ins in the boot.conf on your tftp server.

echo << 'EOF'> /tftpboot/etc/boot.conf
stty com0 115200
set tty com0
EOF

/etc/ttys

if you have your system installed, the /etc/ttys should look like this:

root@apu ~# fgrep tty00 /etc/ttys
tty00 "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600" vt220 on  secure

so, it’s all ready to get a login prompt on your console.

Console Server

but if you connect to your apu through ssh and you wan’t to use the Serial Port for connecting to other’s boxes Serial Port (Switches ? install another APU ? whatever ?) you still can do that, but you need to update your /etc/ttys file and reboot afterwards

/etc/ttys

root@apu ~# fgrep tty00 /etc/ttys
tty00 "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600" unknown off

sha256: e62517fd5844a5a34a44b0fcaadc106d71fa651681dba60d80c8191ffecb772f