Serial console

VMs are now being built with serial console support, this vboxmanage command will map the virtual serial port to a socket https://github.com/bloomberg/chef-bach/blob/master/vbox_create.sh#L177-L178

This allows for serial port access when networking has been improperly configured or otherwise failed.

This line ensures that the appropriate kernel configuration is persisted in the kernel https://github.com/bloomberg/chef-bach/blob/master/enroll_cobbler.sh#L41

it also allows users to monitor builds via serial console no longer requiring to run vbox in graphical mode.

##Connecting it is possible to use minicom or socat in order to connect to the device's serial port, in the following example we are connecting to ttyS0 on bcpc-vm3. Be default all serial port speed is set to 9600 by default

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
| A -    Serial Device      : unix#/tmp/serial-bcpc-vm3-ttyS0           |
| B - Lockfile Location     : /var/lock                                 |
| C -   Callin Program      :                                           |
| D -  Callout Program      :                                           |
| E -    Bps/Par/Bits       : 9600 8N1                                  |
| F - Hardware Flow Control : No                                        |
| G - Software Flow Control : No                                        |
|                                                                       |
|    Change which setting?                                              |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Drawbacks

Unfortunately after the install process starts copying packages and proceeding with the installation, the progress is no longer displayed on screen. If you need to see that screen disable serial output by commention out these lines in vbox_create.sh

$VBM modifyvm $vm --uart1 0x3F8 4
$VBM modifyvm $vm --uartmode1 server /tmp/serial-${vm}-ttyS0