Behind a firewall, so the first time I've used the Ajax Console was today.

The first time I logged in it worked fine -- a little slow, but it worked. After my session, I typed "exit" and that was that. Closed the window.

I discovered another problem about 5 minutes later and tried to load it back up. But every time I load it back up, whether in the same or a different browser, I am shown my previous session with the "exit" command as the last thing. I can type commands, but nothing happens. Totally unresponsive.

Any ideas?

Well on my first experience with it, couldn't even see what I was typing, but finally realized I had to resize the browser window to see what was going on...Doh!

By the way, this still isn't working. Anyone have any idea what is going on?

I'd say the first culprit -- why is it loading my history? Shouldn't a new session be fired up blank? Why should I be shown my past session? Why doesn't a new session log-on anew?

Again, this is not a cache-issue -- it happens regardless of what computer or browser I use to log-in. Seems like a fatally serious bug in your console ... you can log in once and never again.

Anyone look into this? Need more info? As of right now, I cannot log in from behind my proxy.

I rarely use the web console, but I suspect you're just seeing normal LISH behavior, as the web console just wraps the LISH console session for use in a web browser. There's only one console on your Linode and LISH provides access to it, and it buffers console output. You see a similar situation (prior output) when connecting with SSH.

You may or may not be logged in via the console, but the connection between LISH and your Linode on the console is persistent, just as if you had a physical serial console connected to the Linode. So essentially you're always connecting to a live connection. It's not like a normal ssh connection to your Linode where each connection is a new virtual terminal.

That's actually extremely useful, since if something goes wrong, you can review prior console output by connecting with LISH.


I just opened up a web console to one of my Linodes multiple times, logged in and out several times, and all seems fine. That doesn't mean there isn't a bug but it's certainly not global or always present.

I do recall there being some issues with the Ajaxterm javascript module used for the web console and some browsers in the past (maybe FireFox, although that's what I just used in my tests), so you might give a shot with a different brand of client browser just for the heck of it. Or I suppose your proxy might be interfering with its operation, so if you could try when you have a chance without the proxy in the way it would be an interesting test.

Personally, I only use the web console as a last resort. A plain SSH connection to LISH is faster, and less resource intensive. But of course you need to be able to get the SSH connection in the first place. Although trying that as another test would also be useful.

-- David

PS: In your first session, when you used exit to log out, you should have seen a new login prompt appear. If it didn't, then the issue could actually be a configuration or operational error on your Linode that is preventing the serial console from working. In that case, there might not actually be anything wrong with LISH, but it's your Linode that is no longer accepting input on the console.

[quote]
PS: In your first session, when you used exit to log out, you should have seen a new login prompt appear. If it didn't, then the issue could actually be a configuration or operational error on your Linode that is preventing the serial console from working. In that case, there might not actually be anything wrong with LISH, but it's your Linode that is no longer accepting input on the console.[/quote]

Interesting. I did not realize the LISH was "always on" like that. Seems like that might be the issue then, since when I typed "exit" a new login prompt did not appear.

Essentially, right now it just looks like notepad. I can type, hit "enter" etc and get normal "edit-like" behavior, but no responses as I would expect to get from a command prompt.

Any ideas how to reset it, or check my configuration files?

That would be consistent with nothing paying attention on the Linode side as the basic input is queued up in the console port driver but never processed by anything. In line mode, you can do basic editing on existing input before hitting enter.

That's not to say that something else might not be hosed, so it's still useful to double check that you get the same behavior with ssh to LISH if you can manage it.

In terms of from your Linode side, it varies by distribution and which kernel you are using. For 2.6 Stable - currently 2.6.18 - the console port will appear to your linode as /dev/tty1. For 2.6 Paravirt - currently 2.6.32 - it appears as /dev/hvc0. But for either, you should be able to see a getty process running on it to handle logins. Some distributions may use an alternative to getty. Ubuntu 8.04 LTS uses agetty, but it is still named getty, not sure about others.

BTW, I'm not sure if switching kernels does anything to fix the console naming change, so if you switched from stable to paravirt, you might need to manually adjust the console port. Though I think if your configuration has the xenify distro helper option enabled (the default) this gets fixed automatically.

That process has to restart when you log out, and how it restarts (and is started initially) again depends on distribution, but its normally part of processing by init. Often it's controlled by /etc/inittab, though Ubuntu 8.04 uses /etc/event.d with its init replacement "upstart", so there's a tty1 or hvc0 file in there. I think later in 10.4 that changes to /etc/init/jobs.d.

But bottom line there needs to be something that starts that console getty and then restarts it when needed.

If it's not running, before troubleshooting why it didn't restart, you could just try (as root) running it manually as "/sbin/getty 38400 tty1" (or hvc0) and see if you get a login prompt in LISH. I don't think under Xen the baud rate matters terribly, but that's the value my Linodes use.

If it is running, try killing it (under normal setups it should then get restarted automatically) and see if that gets a prompt up.

Presuming that works, check for your distribution how it is supposed to be kept running and see if there are any logs/dmesg information to be found as to why it might not be or might have hung.

-- David

Did think of one other thing - once you login getty execs your login shell, so if for some reason that never really exited it could be preventing the next getty execution. So maybe your "exit" never really exited.

So I'd also suggest checking if you have any processes on the machine still attached to the console port (tty1 or hvc0). It might be that all you need to do is fully exit them all out or kill them off if they are hung.

-- David