according to my understanding if it was a problem of kernel command line or a missing config in the kernel , then you wont have got the output while booting. but since you are getting the output while booting and the output stops once the control is handed over to your bash, that implies it is something with the configuration.
Well, my problem is that the 'controlling tty' is somehow NOT the serial console even if I boot the kernel with console=ttyS0,115200n. So thats why I was wondering if there some kernel config that could change that or help me debug it further. Could be a misbehaving BIOS too. Don't know for sure.
ofcourse i can be wrong , but if i was in your position now , i would have looked at configuration for busybox compilation.
Yeah, thats were I'm poking around right now. Busybox's inittab has a slightly different interpretation of the commands (eg: the id field is interpreted as a terminal console (tty0/ttyS0 etc)). I also suspect the board's BIOS of playing foul. Although I've no idea how or why.
i said about filesystem , because you have not mentioned in your first mail that you are running busybox. you mentioned x86 board and bash , so it could have been any linux distribution .
Busybox can run off a filesystem too. Although if there was some error mounting the rootfs I guess I should've seen some error from the kernel? Thanks for your time! Regards, -mandeep