Regression #16031
closed
Some older ISA-based uart consoles do not function on development snapshots around 25.03 or later
100%
Description
At some point after 24.11, serial consoles for some devices started failing on development snapshots (Plus 25.03-25.07+, CE 2.8.0). The kernel boot messages are still printed to the serial console but there are no signs of the uart device or console in those messages, the pfSense boot messages do not show, nor does the menu. No input is processed after boot, either.
It appears there were some upstream changes in non-PNP ISA devices that may be related.
By adjusting the values in device.hints (or via loader.conf / loader.conf.local) to specifically probe the uart devices via ISA instead of ACPI, these devices function again:
hint.uart.0.at="isa" hint.uart.1.at="isa"
Known affected platforms so far are RCC-VE (4860, etc.) and APU devices.
Updated by Luiz Souza 2 months ago
Fixed for the RCC based hw.
Fixed on 25.07 and 25.03.
Updated by Jim Pingle 2 months ago
- Status changed from Confirmed to In Progress
- Assignee set to Luiz Souza
- % Done changed from 0 to 70
- Release Notes changed from Default to Force Exclusion
4860 upgraded fine and had a working console on the latest snapshot.
Not sure which other platforms we may want to detect and set this for as well since we have no idea about older EOL hardware. We can document the workaround as well.
Updated by Luiz Souza 2 months ago
The APU is also fixed in 25.07.
This fixes the Netgate Installer support for the APU.
Updated by Jim Pingle about 2 months ago
- Status changed from In Progress to Resolved
- % Done changed from 70 to 100
Note added to 25.03 docs: https://gitlab.netgate.com/docs/pfSense-docs/-/commit/d78ded2d4e13701fd557522d7a8ccb8604d836a5
Workarounds are in and tested for hardware we know about, so probably good to close this for now. Can always revisit if more work is necessary.