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

[dbw]

At Tuesday, 13 February 2001, you wrote:
>Just a suggestion, but it might be the keyboard.  Sometimes when 
a piece of
>equipment is going bad it will work for limited periods of time.  Try
>another keyboard and see if it works.
>
>Bill
>

I would like to respectfully stress with euphemism the point that 
this isn’t a hardware problem with my keyboard.  Mentioned in various 
follow-up posts are other hardware issues that are also not the problem 
with this particular system. 

I didn’t feel it was necessary to elaborate on how I tested these 
things and came to the conclusion before. I thought it would be enough 
that I simply said, “This is not a problem with the keyboard or hardware 
related”.  Now I will elaborate on this issue of hardware so that 
we may put any further hardware related suggestions to rest.

1. Tried two different keyboards, same result
2. The mouse is also dead on the machine when this occurs
3. System is on a KVM switch serving several other PC servers and 
the keyboard works fine on those other systems.
4. Not CPU/hardware/heat related because the services on the machine 
continue to run, such as the ipchains and bind.  These services continue 
running and working correctly even though the console is frozen and 
I cannot login to the box; such as I mentioned in the first post.
If the CPU overheated and the system locked-up, then these services 
would also be inactive.
5. I can ping the server and if a remote login service is enabled,
I can access it and login that way as well.
6. Monitor is also connected to KVM switch serving several other severs
7. There is the usual harddrive activity and blinking of the unit 
lights such as the case if the box is running correctly.
8. Other testing, etc. brings me to the conclusion that this is not 
a hardware related issue; unless the issue is so very obscure and 
only affects mingetty on Linux.  This box previously had OpenBSD 
install on it and there were no problems with the console locking 
up in this manner, so maybe that point could be #9 on the list.

If I enabled a remote login service, such as rlogin, then I would 
be able to access this machine while the console is frozen.  For 
some reason, the keyboard and mouse do nothing when I try to login 
directly from the console, yet if I have a remote login service running 
I am able to access the machine, authenticate, and use a working 
shell via this method.  However, I do not wish to enable rlogin, 
telnet, ssh, or any remote login service on this unit for security 
reasons. (See previous posts for more details)

Connecting the machine to another via serial cable will work the 
best for me.  Hopefully I will be able to, at minimum, do a shutdown 
–r and restart the server when this “console freeze” issue occurs 
in the future.  I appreciate the example on how to put a getty on 
a serial line from Dave.  I’ve ordered a serial cable and when that 
arrives I am going to attempt connection by way of this method.  
I may have further questions if I am unable to get this to work correctly.


This console freeze issue does however intrigue me.  I have seen 
this before on another Linux system but only once.  On this particular 
system it seems to happen about once a week now, which is quite frequent.
It without a doubt compromises my uptime and serves as an inconvenience,
yet the server is technically still functional and serving its duty 
in accomplishing the work that it is supposed to do.

The serial cable solution is a short-term fix that will allow me 
to gain access to the machine without compromising security.  Yet,
it would be interesting to learn what is really causing this problem.
I wonder if it is some issue with mingetty?

Thank you,

-Derek











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