AIX

Hi everyone,
My latest challenge sees me assisting with the setup of one of our classroom labs.

We are trying to configure the lab so that the (5) IBM 9115-505 servers (all running AIX7.1) have their serial 0 ports connected to a Digi PortServer II, which is on the classroom LAN, along with the students' laptops. The hope is that the students can Telnet to the PS II (192.168.2.200:xxxx) where xxxx is the port for each serial port on the PortServer.

After reading the Digi documentation (I have no prior experience with the Digi products), I'm finding the initial setup very confusing, and I have been so far unsuccessful.

I've seen mention of RealPort drivers, but I don't think that's the issue because we would need to access these *before* the servers are powered on (to access ASMI).

On the PortServer II, I have the 5 ports we will use as follows:
Baud: 19200 (to appease AIX..
Data/Parity/Stop/Flow: 8N1-Hardware

Additionally, each one is configured with ports 2001-2005.

I'm thinking it might have something to do with the cabling, so I've been referring to one of the guides from Digi which talks about the pinouts. Does anyone know if a standard roll-over cable with an RJ-45-to DB9 works?

EDIT: I should have noted earlier, that the students' laptops are all Windows-based; only the servers are AIX.

I know I may not have included all the relevant information, but I'm not even sure if I'm asking the right questions!

Thanks for any insight or direction..

Cheers,

R

I think that you are trying to run the port server backwards.
The port server only has one IP address, and its ethernet port is usually connected to a single (aix) host, so that multiple laptop users can connect to the single host through their serial port.
What you probably need to do is connect the AIX machines to the local area network, either through its ethernet port, or using PPP through its serial port.

Thanks for the reply! If I'm not mistaken, there are at least two ways to use these Portservers; one, the way you mention, which would require the driver as well. The other scenario which I have found reference to, suggests they can be used to attach the consoles of multiple servers to, in order to access the serial ports over a single Ethernet connection/port using Telnet or SSH. It just seems to be quirky to setup with AIX.



R

Have you enabled getty on the serial ports.
Either by running 'enable ttyA1' possibly, or editing /etc/inittab.

I have not; however, the port should be available to me before the pseries server is powered on (to access the ASMI) - so I would expect that as a possible issue only once AIX has booted up.

R

---------- Post updated 05-16-16 at 10:42 AM ---------- Previous update was 05-15-16 at 09:33 PM ----------

Hi everyone, thanks for the suggestions so far - I've been able to determine with certainty that the issue is not in fact on the POWER/AIX side, but rather on the Digi/cabling side of things. Taking this over to the Digi forum on their site..

Thanks!

R