pfSense

I had this issue as well, but I don't think this is an issue with 2.2. This was most likely an issue with previous releases. My 2.1.5 config file before upgrade to 2.2 looked like this:

        <disableconsolemenu/>
        <serialspeed>9600</serialspeed>
        <primaryconsole>serial</primaryconsole>

Even though primary console was set to serial, I was using it only via VGA and everything was working fine.
After upgrade to 2.2 I was no longer seeing boot messages on VGA. Once I set primaryconsole to video everything starter working just like before. I might have had to un-check 'Serial Terminal' check box after upgrading to 2.2 as well, not 100% sure about it.

I cloned my firewall from v2.1.5 snapshot and performed an update to v2.2 again to try and reproduce this issue, but everything worked as expected. Then I remembered that I did config restore after upgrade to 2.2. So I backup settings, restore them and sure enough 'Serial Terminal' checkbox is checked after restore even though it was unchecked before.

Turns out that this is very easy to reproduce. No matter what your settings are if you perform a restore 'Serial Terminal' will become checked. This bit of code in diag_backup.php seems to be responsible for it:

                                    $loaderconf = file_get_contents("/boot/loader.conf");
                                    if (strpos($loaderconf, "comconsole")) {
                                        $config['system']['enableserial'] = true;
                                        write_config("Restore serial console enabling in configuration.");
                                    }

/boot/loader.conf always has line:

comconsole_speed="115200" 

so restore code always ends up enabling 'Serial Terminal'.

Now the strange thing is that pfSense I have running on ESXi with settings:

Serial Terminal: checked
Primary Console: Serial Console

does not display init system messages during boot, only kernel messages, but different pfSense running with the same settings on VMware Workstation does display init settings. Go figure!

Andrew - can you confirm if you performed config restore after upgrading to 2.2.

Working fine now. Thanks Chris.