UNIX and KVM Response

[johng75]

my company has an IBM: AIX box and its hooked into a belkin KVM, the box was restarted the incorrect way a week ago, and the KVM was not set to the IBM:AIC channel, now the monitor displays, the mouse responds, but the keyboard doesnt, any one have any ideas on how to get the keyboard to respond without having to restart the machine again, it is the main production machine, the company runs 24x7 and the only reason it was turned off in the first place, the power cut out on the building, and the generator never came on, and the battery would only carry so far, it was late at night and no one knoew until we got a phone call at midnight saying the system just went down

Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention
of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body,
but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up,
totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming

--"WOW-- What a Ride!"

 

[edfair]

Try bringing another machine up on another port. Then switch back and forth and see if it doesn't reconnect.
Some KVMs are sensitive to power availability on the keyboard ports and require multiple machines to be attached before the switching works correctly.

But you may be forced to power cycle it, and there is the possibility of the switcher being bad.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[johng75]

i was affraid of that, its a 4 port KVM and all 4 ports are used and this is the only one giving me issues.....thanx for the imput

Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention
of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body,
but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up,
totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming

--"WOW-- What a Ride!"

 

[p5wizard]

Does the keyboard still respond to numlock & capslock or not at all?

Is the keyboard device available on the AIX box? Run the following command from a telnet session:

lsdev -C -l kbd0

If it is not in state Available, try running

mkdev -l kbd0

You also might want to try plugging out (and back in) the keyboard cable at the AIX box side or the KVM side? I don't think that would hurt.


HTH,

p5wizard

 

[edfair]

I wouldn't suggest unplugging from a running box. I've seen several M/Bs blown as a result. Unix sustems included.

Sounds like more an AIX issue. But to prove it you probably need to power cycle it with all the other systems on the KVM powered up.

It shouldn't have mattered that the KVM was set in the wrong position. The keyboard ID comes from the KVM box, unless it has problems.

You might be able to hook another monitor to the AIX to see what the powerup sequence shows when it has the KVM set to the IBM box versus how it responds when it is set to another box. This to try to isolate the problem.

I understand the problems this will create for the production but until it is resolved you are at further risk of having the system become un-manageable.



Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[p5wizard]

Well,

AIX boxes need a keyboard actually there (and responding) when booting, or the device won't become available...

So

mkdev -l kbd0

might do the trick.

BTW, I've just unplugged a keyboard cable from a running AIX box and replugged it without any real hassle. Just an errorlog entry from the KBDDD (KeyBoardDeviceDriver).
The console is still happily accepting input from keyboard...


HTH,

p5wizard