rx2620 console

[William E Howard]

Trying to do some local work on an rx2620 (new OS install) in my lab. For some reason, the local console port refuses to work. I have tried from multiple machines, including an HP Console, and none show anything. I do not have a management card in it, so I cannot get in thru there. I have tested both serial ports, and neither do anything.

I know this worked before, but I have been working remotely on this box for the past year, so I do not know when this port died.

Is there any way to restore functionality to local console without having to purchase a management card? It is running HPUX 11i v2, and I do have telnet access to it.

[Matti_Kurkela]

Is there a "getty" process running on the console?

Does "ps -ft console" show any processes?

If there are no processes at all running on the console, inspect /etc/inittab: someone might have disabled the console getty. (A mistake, or a misguided security measure?)

If there are some processes: use whatever means available to become root and kill those processes. Normally the init process should automatically re-start getty on the console when any previous processes are gone. Any non-getty processes on the console might be remains of a hung session.

If the problem persists through a server reboot, examine the /etc/rc.log file and the startup scripts: as the scripts are executed sequentially, a startup script that is stuck might prevent the server from completing the transition to runlevel 3, so the console getty is never started. As you have telnet access, the server has obviously got past the point of starting inetd.

If everything looks OK on the software side, a hardware failure is possible.

MK

[William E Howard]

Inittab looks fine, I can see the getty respawn. It is a running process. Getty appears to be the only thing running on Console. Everything else shows either ? or pts/ta.

The problem exists even before Unix boots. I have gone thru numerous reboots and I never see post or EFI.

Once I saw a single line of garbage coming across during initial boot. It was something like h1242=ae23&;... did things like that for about 50 chars. I thought it might be error codes, but I lost that screen and it has not come back during other boots.

I do have a video card I can stick in this, which is what I plan on trying next. See if I can get to the console setup in EFI there and find anything wrong.

[William E Howard]

Turns out there was already a video card in it (I had not even thought to check) and someone had redirected console to go just thru that. By changing the console redirect in the EFI shell, solved the problem.