[olug] My console has fallen and it can't get up

[Phil Brutsche]

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far way, someone said...

> This just happened again on the same box.  This time I was NOT in
> X11 and it had nothing to do with the X screensaver.  The machine
> froze at the login prompt; once again the keyboard was completely
> unresponsive.  I suspect that the fact I was in an X session the
> first time is incidental.  Once again the console is completely dead.

Suspect hardware - motherboard, cpu, etc.  Especially the motherboard.

Also check for heat - Computers tend to "lock up" when they get hot

> Last time I received a lot of “press this key and then press that”
> suggestions.  I will reiterate the fact that the keyboard does not
> respond, not even CNTRL-ALT-DELETE does anything.  It is not a hardware
> problem with the KB, after all, when I restart the system by killing
> the power then the system comes back and the keyboard is fine.

In this case no combinations of keystrokes will help you.

> I want to take up Phil Brutsche on his suggestion to put a getty
> on one of the machines serial ports.  I do not want to run ssh or
> any remote login services for security reasons, but accessing the
> machine via the serial port would be a great solution.

You basically need something like this:

T1:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS1 9600 vt100

in /etc/inittab.  That's on a Debian system; this variant:

T1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty ttyS1 9600 vt100

works on RedHat.

It won't help you when the computer's totally locked, though.

> Could someone please offer me some information or resource on how
> to accomplish this?

I'm not aware of one.  I played around with it a couple years ago until it
worked :)

> I am guessing that using minicom on another machine I would be able to
> access a login prompt of the afflicted machine via the serial port.

Correct.

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Phil Brutsche					pbrutsch at creighton.edu

GPG fingerprint: BDA4 C23C 1989 31FF CBE8  7EB4 6CA7 9636 941E 8451
GPG key id: 941E8451
GPG public key: http://www.creighton.edu/~pbrutsch/public-key.asc


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: olug-unsubscribe at bstc.net
For additional commands, e-mail: olug-help at bstc.net