I have a Raritan SX serial KVM with the newest firmware. I have 2 Checkpoint Smart-1 firewalls. When I connect the KVM to the Checkpoint console port I get a 'init: id "s0" respawn' message in the KVM serial terminal. I assume this is a truncated version of the 'init: id "s0" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes' error message. Can someone help me on how I might fix this possible handshake problem?

I have exhaustively troubleshot this, it's not the cable pinout or connection. I can connect to the console port of the firewall fine from my laptop, just not the KVM. I use the same settings for the connection on the KVM as I do with putty (which works fine). I contacted Raritan and a rollover cable IS the correct cable. They have not been able to help resolve this. I was hoping a linux guru might know the answer!!

I believe the Checkpoint Smart-1 has a DTE RS232 interface, if that's correct then I think you should be using a CAT5 Cable + Raritan ASCSDB9F adapter to connect from the SX to the firewall device. You've probably already tried this, but checking different BPS settings as well as the different interfaces (SSH versus the java applet) may lead to some clues with the problem.

The init message itself points to an program on the firewall device being unable to start and constantly retrying. This message would be dumped to the serial port if it was configured as a console.

Honestly, your best bet would be to contact Raritan tech support to get more support and troubleshooting for this specific configuration.

Actually the serial console interfaces of both the Checkpoint and the Raritan are RJ45, and the correct cable is a rollover cable. I have contacted Raritan and they are pretty much stumped. I tried various settings in the Raritan console, none seem to work. About ready to give up, a KVM should not be so problematic and taking up so much of my time! I hate unresolved problems and really want to fix this issue, but as of now I am also stumped. I have also been seeing a /bin/console-age/ output when connecting to the serial port if that is any help to anyone. Any help would be greatly appreciated. As I believe I stated above I am pretty darn sure that this is not just a hardware issue (ie wrong cable or adapter) but an actual connection/handshakish issue...

Raritan tech support solved this one (thanks guys)! Apparently the Raritan SX uses pins 2 & 7 for DTR/DSR (hardware flow control). These pins were hot, sending a signal to the Checkpoint Smart-1's, which overloaded the s0 (console port) interface. This caused the "init id s0 respawning" message from the s0 interface of the firewall. I opened pins 2 and 7 (cut the orange and white-brown wires on a 568B Ethernet cable on both ends) and PRESTO! the console connection now works fine. So happy now the entire rack is connected via the Raritan SX console KVM!!!