HP-UX System Administrator's Guide: Routine Management Tasks

11. Other things to check.

• Make sure yourinittab entries are active

If you are just adding this terminal and have made a new entry in the

/etc/inittab file by editing it, remember that this doesn’t automatically

make your new entry active. To do that you need to, enter the command:

init -q

This tells the init process to scan the /etc/inittab file to update the

information in its internal tables.

• Check for functioning hardware.

Now is the time to check the hardware. To do this, check the following items:

— If your terminal has a self-test feature, activate it. If not, power the terminal

off, wait several seconds, and power the terminal back on. This will test

(at least to some degree) your terminal hardware.

— An alternate method to test the terminal hardware is to swap the suspect

terminal with a known good one. This will help identify problems within

the terminal that are not caught by the terminal self-test.

NOTE: Be sure to swap only the terminal (along with its keyboard and

mouse). You want the known good terminal at the end of the SAME cable

that the suspect terminal was plugged into). Also, plug the suspect terminal

(with its keyboard and mouse) into the same cable that the known good

terminal was plugged into and see if it functions there.

— If the known good terminal doesn’t function on the suspect terminal’s

cable, and the suspect terminal is working fine in its new location, you can

be confident that the terminal itself is functioning properly and the problem

is elsewhere.

— The next thing to check is the cable connecting the terminal to the computer.

Swap the suspect cable with a known good one.

NOTE: Since you know the terminal at the end of each cable is working,

you only have to swap the ends of the cables where they connect to the

computer. If the problem remains with the terminal it was associated with

prior to the cable swap, you probably have a broken or miswired cable. If

the problem transfers to the other terminal (and the previously bad

terminal/cable combination works in its new location), then the problem

is most likely with your MUX, port, or interface card.