How to boot a 712/60 HPUX 9.07 on a serial console

[David A. Fortin]

I'd like to boot my 712/60 running HPUX 9.07 using a VT100 terminal. I have the terminal configured and it works just fine on the serial port after the system is booted normally. But, I'd like to boot this system without the monitor, keyboard or mouse. I just want to use the serial terminal as the console.

However, the system hangs on power-up when it cannot find a PS2 keyboard directly attached. If I plug a keyboard in, the system will boot properly and, eventually, I'll get a login prompt on the serial terminal.

However, it still thinks the console is the graphics port and the built-in keyboard and mouse, not the RS232 port. I have tried escaping out of the boot select and typing "path console rs232" at the BOOT_ADMIN> prompt but the system tells me it is an unknown path. I can set the boot disk, but not the console in the boot admin.

How can I force the system to use the serial port for the console? Or can I?

[melvyn burnard]

Unfortunately the 712/60 does NOT support using the serial port as a console, so this is why you have a problem.

[melvyn burnard]

Further to my previous reply, if you want to try and see if it will work, you could try this:
boot the workstation into the ISL prompt
conspath 2/0/4.643
and then reboot the workstation.

If it works, then great. If not, as I say unfortunately it is unsupported.

[Patrick Wessel]

The following is for disaster recovery only, and does not imply support:

To set a Gecko up to use rs232 console, do the following:

1. Boot to ISL
2. Execute the conspath command as follows: conspath 2/0/4.643
3. Reboot the system

This will set up rs232 as the console at 9600 baud.

Once you switch to rs232, you can get back by using the conspath command in ISL to set your path back to graphics. Of course, this doesn't work if baud rate, etc is not correct. To switch back to graphics use the following conspath command:

conspath 1.0.0.0

Conspath is written to non-vol memory.

If the baud rate or something else in the configuration is not correct, the only fix is to replace the board at this time.