getty: cannot open console . errno: 6 hp

[M.Kuyper]

We have getty: cannot open console . errno: 6 hpa problem on a A180 HP UX 11.00 Server. We've allready checked the gettydefs the inittab and the devices. they all look fine.
When we log on to the webconsole the ^B works as well, but we dont get a login prompt.

Does any body has a solution for this problem ?

[MANOJ SRIVASTAVA]

The issue can be to do with the serial port or the tty port bad , they are suspectible to leaky earths so you may want to get teh same replaced from HP the console port essentially the mother board . For the time being you can just diable it in /etc/inittab so that the message dont come , in any case you are not able to get any logins.


Manoj Srivastava

[Dietmar Konermann]

Hi!

I wonder, if that problem suddenly happened or if something was changed. E.g. new kernel, remote access card added or similar.

However, you should check if the mux2 driver is configured into the kernel.

Best regards...
Dietmar.

[Vincente Fernandes]

do a ps -ef |grep console and see if any other apps or OS process is using the console tty instead of the below
" root 9215 1 0 Jan 6 console 0:00 /usr/sbin/getty console console"

[M.Kuyper]

Yes the mux2 driver is installed in the kernel.
The problem did not suddenly popped up, it's there since the machine's first boot. Nobody ever noticed the messages in the syslog. ( there are over 400 Unix servers here and nobody complained about the system till now.) Since the problem was always there it could be a hardware problem as well, but i want to make sure it's not a configuration error.

About the ps -ef | grep console
the output line look like this:
root 1243 1 0 Jun 21 ? 0:00 /usr/sbin/getty console console

I don't like the question mark in the column where the tty is supposed to show up.
In reply to your question vincente, there is only one line showing up.

There is one more thing however. Lokking in the syslog the messages contain different timestamps like this:
10:22:23 ztm01b01 : getty:cannot open "con...
16:22:25 ftpd[12265]: FTP LOGIN

The getty messages have a 6 hour early time stamp. The correct one is 16:22:25 in this case. It's weird.

Thanks for your help, i'll hope i can solve this one soon

[John Poff]

Hi,

The 'ps -ef' you supplied for your getty shows that it has been running since June. Have you tried just killing that getty process? It should get respawned by init since it is defined in the /etc/inittab file. Also, you mentioned you are using web consoles. Do you have a regular console you can plug into the console port to see if that works? That might eliminate one variable [the web console].

JP

[Vincente Fernandes]

As root kill pid "1243" and see what happens. The getty process should be respawn by init otherwise do "init q". Was the system rebooted on Jun 21? if yes then it must be having problem since then.
Open another session on the machine and redirect whatever the console output to the tty of the session which you just opened.
This will show what kind of messages it spits on console. Chances that you may get a message like "getty/init is respawing too rapidly" etc.

[M.Kuyper]

The problem appears to be a Hardware Defect. We've let HP Replace the A180 by a Fresh one. We used the old disks from the original server. After the reboot i respawned the init process with init q.

The ps -ef | grep console i discussed earlier in this thread gave the output line looked like this:
root 1243 1 0 Jun 21 ? 0:00 /usr/sbin/getty console console

after the swap with the new server is looked like this

root 1 0 Jun 21 console 0:00 /usr/sbin/getty console console

Thanks all for your input it appeared to be a problem with the main board. I'll hope this thread helps other to solve similiar problems.

greetzz