the console device was open. At other times, the interrupts that
are used to detect the break signal or ~^B sequence were disabled,
so these events would not be noticed until the next open (e.g. the
next kernel printf). This was mainly a problem while there was no
getty running on the console, such as during bootup or shutdown.
For serial consoles with break-to-debugger support, we now enable
the generation of interrupts at attach time, and we leave them
enabled while the device is closed.
Reviewed by: bde (I've since made chages as per his suggestions)