PortServer II & Ports/16EM Problem

Serial Servers & Infrastructure Mangement Portserver TS
#1

Background:
We have a PortServer II with attached Ports/16EM for a total of 32 ports. There are many dumb terminals connected to each. The terminals then log onto a Dell 2850 running SCO 5.x.

Problem:
When users try to log on in the morning, some get in and others receive a “ttypX is disabled - see your administrator” error message. I have used the Digi Connectware DPA Remote monitoring software and determined that several ports on the Ports/16EM device are showing up to 250 “framing errors”. There are 112 ttyp devices on the SCO server and I believe that these “framing errors” are disabling tye ttyp devices for a period of about 5 minutes. Once all of the ttyp devices are disabled, nobody can get on. Resetting the PortServer II seems to correct the problem but it may really just be the time that it takes to reset it, giving the ttyp devices time to re-enable themselves…

This morning I moved all users onto the PortServer II device and removed the Ports/EM16 device to see if the problem follows the terminals. So far, I do not see many framing errors and the users are not receiving the error message.

Is the Ports/16EM device causing this problem???

#2

The error you’re getting almost sounds like a SCO Licensing issue. Try setting up the PortServer II to telnet to some other location other than the SCO server, just to see if that’s the case. If you can telnet/connect to another location, that will definitely point toward SCO since ttypX are SCO psuedo ttys.

Another solution you might want to consider is our Realport driver for SCO Openserver, which can be found on our support site: http://www.digi.com/support.

#3

Thanks for the quick response. It is possible that there is a licensing issue since only some of our licenses were registered properly. I will look here first.

Do you believe that the “framing errors” have nothing to do with this???

Jon

#4

Its really hard to say what’s causing them, but I don’t think that has to do with the ttypX issue.