Strictly speaking, no, the serial console is ttyS0 or ttyS1 or whatever, and
the VTs are tty1, tty2, etc. Linux provides no facility to switch the serial
device among VTs or equivalents.
Upon further thinking, some other tips that may be useful depending on your
need:
-While you cannot switch, if you want to *see* what's on the VTs, you can 'cat
/dev/vcs0', /dev/vcs* provides the current on-screen contents of the various
VTs.
-If you want to make sure that even if you would forget to run tmux or screen,
you still have an alternative way in, it may be worthwhile to put something
like this in your .bash_profile:
if [ `tty` = "/dev/ttyS0" ]; then
exec screen
fi
This would make screen (or tmux or whatever) always run, but only on the serial
console during *login*. I'd be tempted to be fancier (attach or spawn,
depending, maybe more than just serial login, etc.)
When I'm interacting with a serial console, it's generally to debug install
(very grateful for the change to wrap installer in tmux), why a system won't
boot, or why I can't remotely log in (networking or centralized account issue.
Usually don't need more than one session, so I haven't given this situation a
lot of thought. Hope this helps.
Jarrod Johnson
HPC Systems Management Architect
Lenovo
From: Russell Auld [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2015 8:20 AM
To: 'xCAT Users Mailing list'
Subject: Re: [xcat-user] Function keys under rcons and wcons
Thanks for the info!
If I'm reading this right, then there is no way to get to a second TTY or
Virtual Console using serial over LAN (SOL) no matter what version of RHEL I'm
using. Is that correct?
-Russ
From: Jarrod Johnson [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, March 27, 2015 11:09 AM
To: xCAT Users Mailing list
Subject: Re: [xcat-user] Function keys under rcons and wcons
So it depends on your terminal as to whether hitting 'F2' 'just works' For
Gnome terminal and Konsole and xterm at least, it just works (F1 is sometimes
hijacked for 'help' by the terminal, but that can be configured.
Failing that, hit <ESC> 2 for F2, <ESC> 3 for F3, and so on (<ESC> ! For F11,
<ESC> @ for F12). That's hitting escape, releasing escape, hitting number (or
shift-number).
BTW, that was for sending the function keys, which actually wouldn't be the
answer to your real problem. It'll help get you into setup (though I just do
rsetboot <node> setup so I don't have to hit a key) and such, but your
situation is actually different.
Your question is about virtual consoles (tty1, tty2, etc.). Linux does not
have VCs over serial. RHEL/CENTOS7 installer works around this by running
everything inside tmux (and xCAT-genesis similarly runs everything under screen
to allow switching to a new shell at any time). But for RHEL6 and SLES and
Debian/Ubuntu, no such luck. I recommend always running screen or tmux so you
effectively get that capability when you have a choice. As a bonus you get the
ability if you are in that habit for ssh sessions as well (and can resume where
you left off if you lose networking)
Limitation also holds for ESXi. Interestingly enough, Windows serial console
actually does support console switching on serial inherently, much to my
surprise.
From: Russell Auld [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, March 27, 2015 6:48 AM
To: 'xCAT Users Mailing list'
Subject: [xcat-user] Function keys under rcons and wcons
Is there a way to send a function key combo to the system while using rcons?
For example, when Anaconda is running during initial provisioning of a stateful
system, it's sometimes useful to go to another TTY via F2 or alt-F2.
This works when viewing the console with iDRAC or iLO or VNC when the nodes are
virtual, but I haven't been able to send the key when viewing the node with
rcons.
Has anyone done this with rcons? Is it possible?
It looks like you can send an octal control value via ^Ec\ and then the code,
but it didn't seem to work on the system I was using.
Thanks,
Russ
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