rx2600 RedHat AS elilo question [crosspost]

[David Horowitz]

Hi.

I have recently inherited two rx2600's running RedHat Advanced Server. The root passwords that I was given by the person who set these up do not work. I am currently trying to boot these into single user mode in order to modify the passwords.

I am accessing the EFI/MP through a terminal server hooked into the MP port. I am able to reset the server, and access the elilo prompt through the console. However, when I issue the "linux," "linux single," or "linux console=ttyS0 single" commands, I only see up to the line "Loading initrd initrd-2.4.18-e.31smp.img...done." I believe that if I give it just "linux," I will see an "ATI9" after the loading line. I have also tried using ttyC0 in hopes that it would output to console, but had no luck.

If booting the default kernel, I will eventually be able to access this server via telnet, but I still don't see any console output.

I also connected a terminal server connection to serial port A and watched the output there. This just mirrored what I saw from the MP console output.

What am I doing wrong? How can I view/interact with the console?

thanks,

David

[Rick Beldin]

A couple of things. IA64 systems w/ EFI has multiple consoles defined at EFI level. Make sure in the boot administration menu that you are selecting all the input, output, and error consoles. By default you will have builtin video (vga) and keyboard, and serial will have to be enabled. If you have an MP card, that is yet another console that can be enabled.

Type linux console=ttyS0,9600n8 for serial console access.

For doing this permanently, make a elilo.conf entry something like this:

image=vmlinuz-2.4.21-20.EL
label=2.4.21-20.EL
initrd=initrd-2.4.21-20.EL.img
read-only
append="root=LABEL=/ console=ttyS0,9600n8 console=/dev/ttys0"

[David Horowitz]

Rick, thanks for the response.

I am seeing "Acpi(HWP0002,700)/Pci(2|0)" as a selected device. From the getting strated guide for the server, it states that this is the MP VGA port, which is what I have the terminal server plugged into. (It also has the serial port selected as an output device.)

How would I specify the MP port as a device to lilo? If I specify ttyS0, would it display to both the serial port and MP port?

thanks,

David

[David Horowitz]

I was finally able to get back to this issue, and I talked to someone at HP.

It seems that the serial port was selected in the output of the console maintenance menu. The HP rep told me that this could override the other output modes, and the serial port was actually set to ttyS3 and not 0.

Unselecting the serial port, and issuing console=ttyS0 at the elilo prompt allowed me to boot normally from the maintenance port.

-David