From: Justin M Kuntz (jkuntz_at_prominic.com)
Date: Sun 15 Dec 2002 - 00:42:18 GMT
Hello,
We have a few machines running vserver enabled kernels, and while this
problem is certainly not directly related to vserver, I think we are
getting a trap on the consoles which may be related to vserver or the
linux kernel in general - and needs to be debugged/reported. We're
running 2.4.19-ctx13. Unfortunately, a lot of times when the kernel hangs
we aren't seeing anything on the screen after we notice the hang, because
we're running Red Hat 7.3 in runlevel 3, and by default the console will
get blanked if no keyboard activity is present for a while. Apparently
console.c does this automatically unless modified.
We've found some commands and made a script which should be runnable from
an SSH session (not necessarily just on the console):
setterm -term linux -blank 0 > /dev/tty0
setterm -term linux -powerdown 0 > /dev/tty0
setterm -term linux -powersave off > /dev/tty0
(apparently BIOS settings are ignored for these things -- also whatever
user executing the above must be a member of the "tty" group in /etc/group
if not root)
My question is - what are the rest of the vserver users doing to make sure
that kernel trap messages are not getting lost by these console blanking
problems? Is there some obvious Red Hat option that is easier than
placing a startup script everywhere, that for some reason everyone else
has enabled by default that I just didn't know about? If so, I'd like to
know what it is. :)
If not, I suggest the rest of us on the list add the above 3 lines to some
startup script, and then we might have an easier time reporting when there
are kernel traps (whether they are general kernel issues or related to the
vserver patch).
Thanks!
Justin