i have a sco unixware 7.1 box. terminals are connected thru digi multiserial devices. some users are also connected over the lan from pc stations running terminal emulation programs.
in few last weeks periodically ( almost every other day ) happens the situation where:
the users already connected are getting ‘frozen’
the users trying to login are able to type their username and password, they see the welcome text but no shell prompt is shown and no echo is displayed when they type some chars. On the other side the system seems to be running, because if they try to type ‘exit’ the session ends. this happens if ‘normal users’ are trying to login. root user can nicely login and normally work, except that when he types :
shutdown -y -i0 -g0
… to stop the system, he gets
UX:sh (/sbin/shutdown): ERROR: Cannot make pipe
… so, i use ’ init 0 ’ to stop it and reboot
after rebooting the system works fine for couple days and so on …
i have read the log files ( syslog, osmlog ) , no useful info there
i also have visited sco.com, but i have not found similar problems in their knowledge base.
The shutdown errors seems to be an O.S. error not related to Digi.
With regards to the user logins hanging and not echoing, I recommend trying this on the system built-in serial port(s) to see if the behavior is also seen there. If not, you will want to compare and match up the “stty -a /dev/term/x##x” port settings with the Digi port.
Also, it may help to know what Digi product and driver are being used.
i noticed that behavior is the same on tcp_ports too! ( pc running terminal emulator over the LAN ). so, the problem seems to be not related with digi ports only.
i downloaded and applied the maintenance pack. i have to wait couple days to know if the issue is resolved ( i hope so ). then i’ll return here to inform you.