newbie: I can't get a serial console on our p5

Hi all,

We had an IBM engineer here this morning because our p5 aix5.3 box
wouldn't boot. He used winxp hyperterminal and one of our serial cables
to get to the console, clear the error log and presumably some other
magic. The machine now starts fine and is ssh accessable. I'd like to
be able to get to this console myself so that we don't have to get an
engineer next time but try as I might I cannot get to the console. The
only thing I changed was that the cable is now connected to our win2k
box (the engineer wouldn't let me keep his laptop!). I tried to use
hyperterminal (19200, 8N1) as the engineer did but I can't get anything
from the machine at all. No noise, nothing.
What am I doing wrong? Does the console only appear at boot time?

Cheers,
Charlie

charlie wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> We had an IBM engineer here this morning because our p5 aix5.3 box
> wouldn't boot. He used winxp hyperterminal and one of our serial cables
> to get to the console, clear the error log and presumably some other
> magic. The machine now starts fine and is ssh accessable. I'd like to
> be able to get to this console myself so that we don't have to get an
> engineer next time but try as I might I cannot get to the console. The
> only thing I changed was that the cable is now connected to our win2k
> box (the engineer wouldn't let me keep his laptop!). I tried to use
> hyperterminal (19200, 8N1) as the engineer did but I can't get anything
> from the machine at all. No noise, nothing.
> What am I doing wrong? Does the console only appear at boot time?
>
> Cheers,
> Charlie

Your P5 serial ports are located next to the corner power supply (I
believe that they are labelled SPC1 and SPC2). The setup you are using
sounds correct, as the pSeries servers come up by default with the baud
rate of 19200 compared to the older servers that were 9600. First, make
sure that the cabling is in that location.

Second, I believe that as the system is booted, it asks you to specify
a main console by press F2 on the lft or 1 on the ASCII display for the
serial port. I seem to remember that our new pSeries 520 servers
appeared to de-activate the unused ports once you selected to use on or
the other, and then we had to reboot to have it recognized again. (I
wish I would have kept better notes on this... I think they mention it
in the Getting Started guide...)

However, there should be a way to get them to be active. Keep in mind
that they will come up as "vcon" devices now instead of "tty" unless
you buy some special adapter board from IBM that lets them work the way
the used to on the 44P and other older servers.

Steve

steven_nospam at Yahoo! Canada wrote:
> Your P5 serial ports are located next to the corner power supply (I
> believe that they are labelled SPC1 and SPC2). The setup you are using
> sounds correct, as the pSeries servers come up by default with the baud
> rate of 19200 compared to the older servers that were 9600. First, make
> sure that the cabling is in that location.

I only have one port (it's one of those old 9-pin ones) but I haven't
moved the cable since the engineer was here.

> Second, I believe that as the system is booted, it asks you to specify
> a main console by press F2 on the lft or 1 on the ASCII display for the
> serial port.
That would make sense. I should have watched the ibm guy more closely
and asked him to set it up for me while he was here. I will try to
verify this next time it gets rebooted which could be a while away (I
hope).

> However, there should be a way to get them to be active. Keep in mind
> that they will come up as "vcon" devices now instead of "tty" unless
> you buy some special adapter board from IBM that lets them work the way
> the used to on the 44P and other older servers.
I don't need it except for recovery. I just thought it'd be nice to
know it was there and that I had a connection that worked. ibm were
very quick to respond so it shouldn't be too much of a problem if/when
the machine goes boom again.

Cheers,
Charlie

charlie wrote:
> I only have one port (it's one of those old 9-pin ones) but I haven't
> moved the cable since the engineer was here.

> Cheers,
> Charlie

Charlie,

If you only have one port, I may be thinking of a different machine.

But I agree it is very useful to have an alternate way to connect. We
use a serial port attached to a modem and dial in to do upgrades and
installs from a remote location for our customers who don't normally
have a dedicated sys-admin onsite. Most of these places are factories
and the admin is also the factory manager or the accountant.

Steve