[vserver] console blanking in runlevel 3 on Red Hat 7.3 / 2.4.19-ctx13

[Justin M Kuntz]

Hello,

We have a few machines running vserver enabled kernels, and while this problem is certainly not directly related to vserver, I think we are getting a trap on the consoles which may be related to vserver or the linux kernel in general - and needs to be debugged/reported.  We're running 2.4.19-ctx13.  Unfortunately, a lot of times when the kernel hangs we aren't seeing anything on the screen after we notice the hang, because we're running Red Hat 7.3 in runlevel 3, and by default the console will get blanked if no keyboard activity is present for a while.  Apparently console.c does this automatically unless modified.

We've found some commands and made a script which should be runnable from an SSH session (not necessarily just on the console):
setterm -term linux -blank 0 > /dev/tty0
setterm -term linux -powerdown 0 > /dev/tty0
setterm -term linux -powersave off > /dev/tty0

(apparently BIOS settings are ignored for these things -- also whatever user executing the above must be a member of the "tty" group in /etc/group if not root)

My question is - what are the rest of the vserver users doing to make sure that kernel trap messages are not getting lost by these console blanking problems?  Is there some obvious Red Hat option that is easier than placing a startup script everywhere, that for some reason everyone else has enabled by default that I just didn't know about?  If so, I'd like to know what it is. :)

If not, I suggest the rest of us on the list add the above 3 lines to some startup script, and then we might have an easier time reporting when there are kernel traps (whether they are general kernel issues or related to the vserver patch).

Thanks!

Justin