HP-UX Virtual Partitions Administrator's Guide (includes A.05.02)

How vPars and its Components Work

Virtual Consoles

Chapter 2

• 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)” on page 140.

• 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” on page 74.

• 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 partition. When this CPU is migrated to a

running virtual partition, the console will not accept any keyboard input.

You can do either of the following to resolve the problem:

— From a running partition, reset the partition that owns the hardware console port by

executing vparreset -p target_partition -h, where target_partition is the

partition that owns the hardware console port.

— From a running partition, boot the partition that owns the hardware console port by

executing vparboot -p target_partition, where target_partition is the partition

that owns the hardware console port