Managing Systems and Workgroups: A Guide for HP-UX System Administrators

Configuring a System
Adding Peripherals
Chapter 3258
Troubleshooting Problems with Terminals
There are a number of terminal related problems that can occur. Many of
these result in a terminal that appears not to communicate with the
computer. Other problems cause “garbage” to appear on the screen
(either instead of the data you expected or intermixed with your data).
This section primarily addresses problems with alpha-numeric display
terminals; however, many of the steps discussed here can also be applied
to problems with terminal emulators such as HP AdvanceLink (running
on a Vectra PC) or X Window terminal processes (such as hpterm and
xterm). Also see “Other Terminal Problems” on page 263.
Unresponsive Terminals
There are many things that can cause a terminal not to respond (no
characters are displayed except, perhaps, those which are displayed by
the terminal’s local echo setting). Here is a procedure you can use to find
many of them.
Step 1. Check the status of the system.
Is the system still up? If not, you’ve probably found your problem. You
will need to reboot the system.
Is the system in single user state? If so, the only active terminal will
be the system console. Other terminals will not respond. You will need to
switch to a multiuser state. See the init (1M) manpage for more
information on changing run states.
NOTE To check what run state your system is in (from a working terminal)
type:
who -r
The output will look something like:
. system boot Feb 10 07:1020S
The current state of the machine is in the field immediately to the right
of the time (third field from the right). For complete information on each
of the fields, consult the who (1) manpage.