[SeaBIOS] USB serial console support?

[Kevin O'Connor]

On Fri, Apr 03, 2015 at 04:54:43PM +0000, Parker, John M wrote:
> Hi
> 
> This is a new-user question.
> 
> I am working on a platform bring-up, specifically getting a port of
> SeaBIOS sorted out.  So far so good, the code has made it all the
> way through to the USB enumeration.
> 
> The current task is to bring up the boot menu on a 'serial over USB'
> console.  So:
> Is a serial port boot menu supported?
>                Is there a serial over USB module in the works?

Unfortunately, this feature isn't currently available.  I'm not aware
of anyone working on it.

There are two parts to getting the above to work: forwarding keyboard
and video over serial, and USB serial support.

In the past, we've used sgabios ( https://code.google.com/p/sgabios/ )
to provide keyboard/video over traditional serial ports.  However,
sgabios wont work with USB serial ports (or even some PCI serial
adapters) and it's unlikely that support will be added.

Getting USB serial to work is a bit of a pain because there does not
appear to be a standard for initializing USB serial adapters.  One
possibility would be to target only one device (and in particular, a
device that something like a Beagle Bone Black could emulate would be
very useful).

So, to get the above to work, I think it would require both adding
sgabios functionality into SeaBIOS and adding USB serial support into
SeaBIOS.

> 
> Thanks for your time
> John Parker (john.m.parker at intel.com)

-Kevin

PS, please post in plain text only (no html) when sending to the
mailing list.