HP-UX Virtual Partitions Administrator's Guide (includes A.03.05 and A.04.05)

NOTE: Note the following when using virtual consoles:
ioscan output On a PA-RISC system, the ioscan output for vcn and vcs drivers show
a value of NO_HW in the S/W State column. This is normal.
•
On an Integrity system, the vPars virtual console is truly virtual and will not show up in an
ioscan. You can see this with the vparstatus -m command:
# vparstatus -m
Console path: No path as console is virtual
Monitor boot disk path: 13.0.11.1.0.8.0
Monitor boot filename: /stand/vpmon
Database filename: /stand/vpdb
Memory ranges used: 0x0/232611840 Monitor
0xddd6000/688128 firmware
0xde7e000/1384448 Monitor
0xdfd0000/33751040 firmware
0x10000000/134213632 Monitor
0x7fffe000/8192 firmware
0x8a0ff000000/16777216 firmware
• Potential for Lost Output Because the console output is a circular buffer, output beyond
the 8K is overwritten and lost.
• Active Console I/O when Multiple Virtual Partitions are Booted It is not deterministic which
virtual partition will be active with the physical console when multiple virtual partitions
are booted.
• Switchover Pause with Shutting Down When the virtual partition that owns the hardware
console port is shut down, there will be a pause of console output (the system is not hung)
as console I/O management switches over from the virtual partition to the vPars Monitor.
Console output resumes automatically after the pause. You will not lose any console output.
During the switchover period, no console input is accepted.
For rp7400/N4000 and rp5470/L3000 servers, the pause can be from ten to twenty seconds.
For Superdome and other nPartitionable servers, the switchover pause can be minutes,
depending on the amount of memory owned by the virtual partition that owns the hardware
console port.
• Pause when Booting from Tape The system may appear but is actually not hung when
booting from tape due to the increased time it takes to load a kernel from tape instead of
from disk.
• Switchover Pause during the Crash State Whenever the virtual partition that owns the
hardware console port is in the crash state, the switchover pause will occur and remain as
long as the virtual partition is in this crash state. For more information on the crash state,
see the vparstatus(1M) manpage and “Commands: Displaying Monitor and Resource
Information (vparstatus)” (page 133).
• GSPdiag1 Device File The GSPdiag1 device file (/dev/GSPdiag1) can only be accessed
from the virtual partition that contains the console hardware port.
• Terminal Emulation To avoid display problems, be sure that the terminal setting of the
GSP on the vPars server matches the terminal or terminal emulator that you are using to
access it. For details on how to do this, see “Setting the GSP Terminal Type” (page 69).
• Ignored Keyboard Input (A.03.xx only) There is one known case where the virtual console
will ignore keyboard input (data sent to the console continues to be displayed; only keyboard
input is ignored). This occurs when the virtual partition that owns the hardware console
port is down and the CPU with the lowest hardware path is not assigned to any virtual
36 How vPars and its Components Work