pfSense

OK, first of all, I appreciate the hard work you guys have done on cleaning up the backend implementation.

However, I am in a tight spot. I'm trying to attach a serial timing device, and I have only one serial port on the target device. I installed the NanoBSD VGA image, expecting it would allow me to disable serial -- it does not, in fact, it goes out of its way to unconditionally enable it.

The usual FreeBSD rubrics simply didn't work -- pfSense kept reverting them, e.g. device.hints were ignored after explicitly setting hw.uart.0.flags=0. So, this appears to be by design, and is as documented. (But that royally hoses those of us trying to attach something like an EndRun device in a datacenter!)

After I eventually figured out what was going on, my only fix was to directly edit /etc/inc/pfsense-utils.inc and put 'return;' at the start of the setup_serial_port() function.

I recognise this issue is difficult to resolve portably; many embedded systems have only one serial port. Moreover, many such devices do not have full modem signalling. Many timing devices present the PPS pulse on other RS232 lines, e.g. DCD.

Alternative console devices would provide a suitable escape route. FreeBSD seems to be behind the curve again here now -- e.g. Linux has native support for USB-based consoles, most often as the device end of USB CDC ACM, and of course the better known USB CDC ECM.