In Fedora 6, xen is installed which take over serial port 1 ttyS0 for xm console. How can I get the serial port back for other use?

Thanks!

Hello:

Not sure if you have resolved this issue or not, but I ran into the same issue when attempting to set up a HA cluster. I installed the stock Fedora 6 distribution. Could not get the serial ports to work. I finally just installed the non-Xen Kernel.

1. Grab the yumdownloader which is part of the yum-utils packages
sudo yum install yum-utils

2. Download the non-Xen Kernel.
sudo yumdownloader kernel-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6.i686

3. Install the new Kernel.
sudo rpm -Uvh --replacefile --replacepkgs kernel-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6.i686
If this is successful, the new Kernel will be installed and /etc/grub.conf will be modified.

4. Stop the Xen services that are running.
sudo /sbin/chkconfig --list |grep xen
Password:
xend 0:off 1:off 2:on 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off
xendomains 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:on 5:on 6:off

sudo /sbin/chkconfig --level 2345 xend off
sudo /sbin/chkconfig --level 345 xendomains off
sudo /sbin/service xend stop
sudo /sbin/service xendomains stop

5. Modify the /etc/grub.conf file.
sudo cp /etc/grub.conf /etc/grub.conf-xen
sudo vi /etc/grub.conf

At this point either comment out the xen related kernel information(#) or delete that information. Here what a copy of my grub.conf looks like.

default=1
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.18-1.2798.fc6)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 console=ttyS0,9600n8r
initrd /initrd-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6.img

6. Now re-boot the box so that the new Kernel is running.

I was able to login via the ttyS0 without issue after this.

I hoped this helps.

Is there a /etc/inittab entry for the serial port?

I normally put the following in my inittab to allow access via the serial console.

s0:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -L -f /etc/serialissue 9600 ttyS0 vt100

Please ensure you have agetty installed, on Fedora Core 6 is was part of the base package.

To restart the inittab run the following
sudo telinit Q

You should now see the follow process running the ps command

ps -aef |grep agetty
root 5093 1 0 Dec09 ttyS0 00:00:00 /sbin/agetty -L -f /etc/serialissue 9600 ttyS0 vt100

Using a serial cable, you should be able to access your box via the serial port.

I hope you found this helpful.