[rescue] Getting a SS5 to run Debian 3.1 headless

[Don Y]

Bryan Gurney wrote:
> My Sparcstation 5 has Debian installed.  It's rather good (considering how old it is), but if I turn it on without connecting the serial cable, it seems to take forever to boot up.  I lost patience tonight and hooked up the terminal, pressed Enter a couple of times, and even typed in "wtf" as if it was a command, and then it continued to boot happily.  It also takes forever to shut down, and shuts down really fast when the terminal is connected.  Am I missing something?  Doing a Google search turned up a few things about /etc/inittab lines, but I'm a bit scared to touch those (what if I take out the serial port A console?  I still want to have that in case of some stupid emergency).
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What do your logs (dmesg?) say is happening?  I run
NetBSD on several different machines (including an SS5)
and have no problems.  I can ping the machine within
30 seconds of the disk spinning up and most services are up
within 60 seconds...