Re: Serial port access and loging services for IOCs?

[Rod Nussbaumer <bomr@triumf.ca>]

Thompson, David H. wrote:
> Here at SNS we have lately had problems with IOCs crashing without 
> leaving any trail for analyzing what the problem was.  We have our own 
> home grown procServe and we are looking into the iocConsole/screen 
> software that SLAC is using.  We are different from SLAC in that we use 
> Digi port servers with a driver on one of the linux servers that maps 
> port server ports into local /dev/ttyXXNNN devices.  We just use 'cu' to 
> open a serial port.  IocConsole does not support that but making it do 
> so would not be hard I don't think.
>  
> Looks like a modified iocConsole is our best option but before we commit 
> to it we thought we out to see what others are doing to capture the last 
> few lines of terminal activity from running and crashed hard IOCs.
>  
> Any ideas?
>  
At TRIUMF we use our own version of iocConsole, developed here after 
consulting with Eric Norum following his presentation to the EPICS 
collaboration. We use the logging capabilities of GNU screen to save 
records of all IOC console output. We communicate with the IOCs through 
serial-ethernet translators, and use C-Kermit to connect to the 
translators' telnet servers. I sense that kermit would be happy to talk 
to the /dev/tty devices your Digi port servers provide.

Rod Nussbaumer,
ISAC Controls Group,
TRIUMF