[powerstation-owners] troubleshooting non-booting powerstation

[Jarod Wilson]

Pattrick Hueper wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 9:31 PM, Adrian Reber <adrian at lisas.de> wrote:
>> If the monitor does not do DDC correctly the firmware cannot detect if a
>> monitor is connected and assumes that no monitor is connected and serial
>> is the output.
> 
> Thats probably it, the message you are seeing is from the VGAs ExpROM,
> it is still in text mode, if the monitor is not detected,
> the Firmware does not switch to framebuffer mode, thus no output.
> Could you try a different monitor?

Ah. This sort of starts to make some sense. I've got a 19" 1280x1024 LCD 
hooked up, but its on the far side of a kvm. Now, the kvm *does* do DDC, 
and is set to report a max resolution of 1280x1024, but its given other 
boxes issues from time to time as well -- not issues quite this bad, but 
issues (such as X not being able to run the optimal resolution, none of 
this entirely disabling the output stuff :). I'm doing an install on the 
machine right now, but will see what I can see with a direct connection 
to a monitor in a bit. Interestingly (maybe), an older IBM 
IntelliStation on the same kvm has no such issues. Obviously different 
firmware though, and a different video card to boot (Matrox G450, iirc).

>> That it still enables the USB keyboard is probably a bug.
>> I would expect that it should not enable the keyboard, but I have no
>> access to a PowerStation anymore so I have to guess here. Looking at the
>> code it seems that the keyboard is enabled even if no "screen" is found.
> 
> Yes, if a keyboard is found and no input is found from serial,  the
> keyboard is selected as input device... you could detach the keyboard,
> and only attach it once linux is up... or press some keys on the
> serial console during boot _before_ the keyboard is detected, that
> should direct the input to serial.

Hrm, that's a bit wonky. Why doesn't it enable both?

--jarod