Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002 16:21:54 -0500
From: John Hawkinson <jhawk@MIT.EDU>
To: Angie Kelic <sly@MIT.EDU>
Cc: sipb-office@MIT.EDU
Subject: Re: video failure, csw.mit.edu, w20-557
Message-ID: <20020317212154.GP8045@multics.mit.edu>
References: <20020317211425.GM8045@multics.mit.edu> <200203172116.QAA03033@prowler.mit.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <200203172116.QAA03033@prowler.mit.edu>
User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.25i

Angie Kelic <sly@MIT.EDU> wrote on Sun, 17 Mar 2002
at 16:16:05 -0500 in <200203172116.QAA03033@prowler.mit.edu>:

> It's not very useful with no display capabilities.  Also not
> very useful when hotline can't shut it down because they don't have 
> the root password and have to flail around on it.

They can press the power button and it should shutdown cleanly.

> "No video at all" doesn't look like a software problem to me
> unless it's at the PROM level, perhaps you can explain that as
> a software bug.  Good luck.

Well, as per sipb-staff[7447]:
| the blade is installing itself as tess-turbo right now.  Once its done,
| we should
| 1) get a better hostname (see discussion on -c sipb -i office)
| 2) install the video card that came with it.  The card is in a box on
| top of the monitor box back near the monolith.  According to Garry, it
| needs prom frobbing to make it work.

That is to say, the onboard video card should work just fine. So the
fact that neither the PCI video, nor the onboard video work,
to me indicates a software problem.

But more fundamentally, my intuition says it is a software problem; I
guess I failed to make that clear in
<200203162000.PAA17732@multics.mit.edu>. Apologies.

--jhawk

> In message <20020317211425.GM8045@multics.mit.edu>, 
> John Hawkinson writes:
> 
> >Angie Kelic <sly@MIT.EDU> wrote on Sun, 17 Mar 2002
> >at 14:34:15 -0500 in <200203171934.OAA07017@hodge-podge.mit.edu>:
> >
> >> To: hotline@MIT.EDU
> >
> >I wish you had not reported this to hotline before we'd had a chance
> >to do due-diligence on the software problems.
> >
> >> I have shutdown the machine and will leave it off.
> >
> >It's a perfectly useful compute-server, it seems weird to
> >turn it off and make it harder for people to try to debug
> >the problems. There doesn't seem to be a benefit in having
> >turned it off.
> >
> >But I won't gainsay you to hotline by leaving it on.
> >
> >--jhawk