MFH r301732, r302288

Updates to EC2 loader.conf:
* Use console=comconsole (r301732) since EC2 now has a "VGA" console;
* Enable blkif indirect segment I/O (r302288) since EC2 now consistently
  gets better disk performance with this option enabled.

1 files changed, 4 insertions, 7 deletions

diff --git a/release/tools/ec2.conf b/release/tools/ec2.conf
index 557e602..a273449 100644
--- a/release/tools/ec2.conf
+++ b/release/tools/ec2.conf
@@ -62,19 +62,16 @@ vm_extra_pre_umount() {
 	echo 'autoboot_delay="-1"' >> ${DESTDIR}/boot/loader.conf
 	echo 'beastie_disable="YES"' >> ${DESTDIR}/boot/loader.conf
 
-	# The EC2 console is an emulated serial port.
-	echo 'console="comconsole"' >> ${DESTDIR}/boot/loader.conf
+	# EC2 has two consoles: An emulated serial port ("system log"),
+	# which has been present since 2006; and a VGA console ("instance
+	# screenshot") which was introduced in 2016.
+	echo 'boot_multicons="YES"' >> ${DESTDIR}/boot/loader.conf
 
 	# Some older EC2 hardware used a version of Xen with a bug in its
 	# emulated serial port.  It is not clear if EC2 still has any such
 	# nodes, but apply the workaround just in case.
 	echo 'hw.broken_txfifo="1"' >> ${DESTDIR}/boot/loader.conf
 
-	# Some EC2 instances suffer a significant (~40%) reduction in
-	# throughput when using blkif indirect segment I/Os.  Disable this
-	# by default for now.
-	echo 'hw.xbd.xbd_enable_indirect="0"' >> ${DESTDIR}/boot/loader.conf
-
 	# The first time the AMI boots, the installed "first boot" scripts
 	# should be allowed to run:
 	# * ec2_configinit (download and process EC2 user-data)