HP-UX corrupted kernel and booting with a console

[Brian St. Marie]

A machine of a client's went down over the weekend, with what I'm told was a corrupted kernel. The machine is a C-class 160. Apparently, the last tech who worked on it swapped the motherboard, hoping that was the problem, but found that the machine would no longer output to the monitor upon reboot. His summation was that the video adapter would not work with the new motherboard. His latest idea was to attempt to boot the machine using a terminal and then recover the OS, however, this hasn't worked. HP tech support told him the baud rate needed to be set at 2400, instead of 9600 (?) but this hasn't yet been tried.

This is the outline I was given for the situation and now I have to go in and clean it up, but the scenario sounds a little unusual. I'm curious if anyone else has run into a situation like this and has any suggestions. I have not worked with an HP workstation this old before, so I'm not sure exactly what the sepcs for the system are. If it does have a RS-232 serial port, I'll try to boot with a terminal, but I'm doubting it will work. I have the feeling the problem may either be with the hard drive or with the new system board he put in.

Any comments or suggestions? I'm still trying to formulate a game-plan.

[John McWilliams]

As an ex-engineer, I would be looking at getting the mother board replaced again, and at least getting a message on the console. I have never seen this type of server but some HP servers will not boot if they cannot communicate with the system console. Are you able to get the original mother board back ?
About the kernel - on the HP9000 from the console prompt before booting you can specify a different kernel to load. Maybe it is possible to do that with this server also.
I hope this helps
John

[Brian St. Marie]

As far as the original motherboard is concerned, I am hoping that it will still be available, but if they believe that is what caused the problem to begin with, it may make the situation worse.

I will look into booting a second kernel; I hadn't thought of that, although the main hurtle appears to be just getting the system to run at all.

Thanks for the input.

[Steffi Jones_1]

Hello,

just having a corrupt kernel seems to be not likely to be the only problem.
If the kernel would give you grief you would see messages on the console which would point to that.

I would lean more towards hardware.
Once you have a chance to boot the box up and have a look at what is going on make sure you give us a bit more information.

Steffi Jones

[jherring]

If you do not want to put the old motherboard back in then i would try the 2400 baud option given by the hp tech support.

i would place the old mb back in and try the old kernel as the guy stated above unless the previous admin had good reason to think the motherbaord was the problem.

changing the fewest things possible is how I try to do things. If one thing does not work then put the old stuff back and try something else. This was you eliminate the possiblity of placing a second problem into the mess.

Jon