Mailing List Archive

Automatic reinitialization, revisited
Hi. I've been a contented user of Conserver for several years, and
currently have about 900 serial ports under management at three sites.
Over time, we've used various Annex products, the Digi EtherLite,
Cyclades TS-x000, and local devices, all with little or no trouble.

However, an attempt by one of our sites to try something new has
generated major headaches for me. They've purchased four 64-port
Cyclades Ze cards and installed them in an x86 box running FreeBSD 4.3.
Cyclades provides a device driver (current version 2.1.1) which is
then compiled into the BSD kernel. After the subsequent reboot, one
ends up with a slough of /dev/ttyCxx entries to talk to.

The fortunate thing is that the cards were installed in the machine
which is our Conserver at that site. Here's the unfortunate thing: We
can talk to these devices just fine using "tip" and similar tools, but
have (so far) been unable to get Conserver to make use of them.

A simple conserver.cf entry of the form:

beta2-5-1:/dev/ttyCd6:9600p:&:

produces a string of error messages in /var/log/conserver of the form:

conserver (6804): beta2-5-1: exit(3) [Mon Oct 14 21:51:39 2002]
conserver (6804): beta2-5-1: automatic reinitialization [Mon Oct 14
21:51:39 2002]

New messages appear once per second, per serial line. Imagine the spew
if you have 256 of these defined (:-(}

If this looks familiar, it may be because you recall a similar thread
started by Malcolm Gibbs back in May. His problems, though, seemed to
center on reinitialization loops for lines which were actually down (not
in use). In my case, these lines are connected and active -- if I kill
the conserver daemons (or just comment out the relevant lines and kill
-HUP), then connect to the device using "tip", I can have a perfectly
acceptable session.

As a workaround, we've configured Conserver to use "| tip <device>" in
order to get things working. But, gack, I really don't want to have 256
"tip" sessions running all the time...

Is anyone out there using a similar setup (Cyclades Ze on FreeBSD?). If
so, was there any magic involved (e.g. settings in dev/cz/config.h
before recompiling the kernel) in getting the devices to play nice with
the Conserver? or did it "just work" for you?

Thanks,
Steve L


--
--
steve lammert software engineer voice: +1-412-323-3500
slammert@panasas.com panasas, inc fax: +1-412-323-3511
Re: Automatic reinitialization, revisited [ In reply to ]
Quoting Steve Lammert <slammert@panasas.com>:
> A simple conserver.cf entry of the form:
>
> beta2-5-1:/dev/ttyCd6:9600p:&:
>
> produces a string of error messages in /var/log/conserver of the form:
>
> conserver (6804): beta2-5-1: exit(3) [Mon Oct 14 21:51:39 2002]
> conserver (6804): beta2-5-1: automatic reinitialization [Mon Oct 14

that's bizarre. the "exit(3)" indicates that conserver thinks the console
type is a program ("|blah" syntax) instead of a device file ("/blah" syntax).
you're really getting these? something is just very wrong, if so. something
you can do is run conserver with the -D flag (redirect things to a file) and
then kill it after it's tried to start up. that will dump the internal tables
and we can look and see what the console types are set to, what the path names
are, etc. could be something is getting munched when it's reading the config
file. or something else bad is happening.

whatever the case, the error and the console specifications just don't match,
so something very wrong is happening (which could explain the lack of
functionality).

Bryan
Re: Automatic reinitialization, revisited [ In reply to ]
oops. I obviously cut-and-pasted from the wrong part of the log. My
apologies. I just generated a fresh set of errors. The following
conserver.cf entry:

beta2-5-1:/dev/ttyCc8:9600p:&:

produced an endless string of errors, viz:

conserver (23228): beta2-5-1: automatic reinitialization [Tue Oct 15
09:39:26 2002]
conserver (23228): lost carrier on beta2-5-1 (/dev/ttyCc8)! [Tue Oct 15
09:39:29 2002]
conserver (23228): beta2-5-1: automatic reinitialization [Tue Oct 15
09:39:29 2002]
conserver (23228): lost carrier on beta2-5-1 (/dev/ttyCc8)! [Tue Oct 15
09:39:32 2002]

No exit() call this time. (:-)}


bryan@conserver.com wrote:

> Quoting Steve Lammert <slammert@panasas.com>:
>
>>A simple conserver.cf entry of the form:
>>
>> beta2-5-1:/dev/ttyCd6:9600p:&:
>>
>>produces a string of error messages in /var/log/conserver of the form:
>>
>> conserver (6804): beta2-5-1: exit(3) [Mon Oct 14 21:51:39 2002]
>> conserver (6804): beta2-5-1: automatic reinitialization [Mon Oct 14
>>
>
> that's bizarre. the "exit(3)" indicates that conserver thinks the console
> type is a program ("|blah" syntax) instead of a device file ("/blah" syntax).
> you're really getting these? something is just very wrong, if so. something
> you can do is run conserver with the -D flag (redirect things to a file) and
> then kill it after it's tried to start up. that will dump the internal tables
> and we can look and see what the console types are set to, what the path names
> are, etc. could be something is getting munched when it's reading the config
> file. or something else bad is happening.
>
> whatever the case, the error and the console specifications just don't match,
> so something very wrong is happening (which could explain the lack of
> functionality).
>
> Bryan
> _______________________________________________
> users mailing list
> users@conserver.com
> https://www.conserver.com/mailman/listinfo/users
>
>


--
--
steve lammert software engineer voice: +1-412-323-3500
slammert@panasas.com panasas, inc fax: +1-412-323-3511
Re: Automatic reinitialization, revisited [ In reply to ]
On Tue, Oct 15, 2002 at 01:12:56AM -0400, Steve Lammert (slammert@panasas.com) wrote:
> The fortunate thing is that the cards were installed in the machine
> which is our Conserver at that site. Here's the unfortunate thing: We
> can talk to these devices just fine using "tip" and similar tools, but
> have (so far) been unable to get Conserver to make use of them.
>
> produces a string of error messages in /var/log/conserver of the form:
>
> conserver (6804): beta2-5-1: exit(3) [Mon Oct 14 21:51:39 2002]
> conserver (6804): beta2-5-1: automatic reinitialization [Mon Oct 14
> 21:51:39 2002]
>
> New messages appear once per second, per serial line. Imagine the spew
> if you have 256 of these defined (:-(}
>
> Is anyone out there using a similar setup (Cyclades Ze on FreeBSD?). If
> so, was there any magic involved (e.g. settings in dev/cz/config.h
> before recompiling the kernel) in getting the devices to play nice with
> the Conserver? or did it "just work" for you?

I couldn't get FreeBSD 4-STABLE to work with conserver on a Cyclades-Z
either.

We had our conserver system running FreeBSD 3.2 for some time, but I
upgraded it to 4-STABLE last month, and ran into exactly the same problem
you encountered. Other telecom programs could talk to the Cyclades-Z fine,
but not conserver. I checked with the other guys who reported this problem
a couple months ago, and nobody'd seemed to have found a solution. (One
of the previous posters is from your site, if I recall..)

I wrestled with it for a day or so, but wound up just installing Linux
on the aforementioned conserver server. Worked fine, then. Never tracked
down if it was a problem with FreeBSD in general, the cz driver, or
something within conserver. But at least you know it's not just you.

--
Preston Smith <psmith@physics.purdue.edu>
UNIX Analyst Purdue University Physics Computer Network
GPG Fingerprint: 6D27 5DAA F58D C42B 7A6B 8F48 04E4 2465 F353 03F6
Re: Automatic reinitialization, revisited [ In reply to ]
If this is truly the case then it must be a slight tty settings in
FreeBSD. Maybe you guys would not mind figuring out what is wrong and
sending this list a patch?


On Tue, 2002-10-15 at 14:17, Preston Smith wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 15, 2002 at 01:12:56AM -0400, Steve Lammert (slammert@panasas.com) wrote:
> > The fortunate thing is that the cards were installed in the machine
> > which is our Conserver at that site. Here's the unfortunate thing: We
> > can talk to these devices just fine using "tip" and similar tools, but
> > have (so far) been unable to get Conserver to make use of them.
> >
> > produces a string of error messages in /var/log/conserver of the form:
> >
> > conserver (6804): beta2-5-1: exit(3) [Mon Oct 14 21:51:39 2002]
> > conserver (6804): beta2-5-1: automatic reinitialization [Mon Oct 14
> > 21:51:39 2002]
> >
> > New messages appear once per second, per serial line. Imagine the spew
> > if you have 256 of these defined (:-(}
> >
> > Is anyone out there using a similar setup (Cyclades Ze on FreeBSD?). If
> > so, was there any magic involved (e.g. settings in dev/cz/config.h
> > before recompiling the kernel) in getting the devices to play nice with
> > the Conserver? or did it "just work" for you?
>
> I couldn't get FreeBSD 4-STABLE to work with conserver on a Cyclades-Z
> either.
>
> We had our conserver system running FreeBSD 3.2 for some time, but I
> upgraded it to 4-STABLE last month, and ran into exactly the same problem
> you encountered. Other telecom programs could talk to the Cyclades-Z fine,
> but not conserver. I checked with the other guys who reported this problem
> a couple months ago, and nobody'd seemed to have found a solution. (One
> of the previous posters is from your site, if I recall..)
>
> I wrestled with it for a day or so, but wound up just installing Linux
> on the aforementioned conserver server. Worked fine, then. Never tracked
> down if it was a problem with FreeBSD in general, the cz driver, or
> something within conserver. But at least you know it's not just you.
>
> --
> Preston Smith <psmith@physics.purdue.edu>
> UNIX Analyst Purdue University Physics Computer Network
> GPG Fingerprint: 6D27 5DAA F58D C42B 7A6B 8F48 04E4 2465 F353 03F6
> _______________________________________________
> users mailing list
> users@conserver.com
> https://www.conserver.com/mailman/listinfo/users
>
>