Physical console

Overview

The physical console is usually the serial output of a Linux VPS. Users are shown how to use this when receiving their welcome email, and it is usually required in order to log in and install a SSH server. It does not require any network access on the VPS.

Consoles are accessed from the physical node that the VPS resides on. As an admin, you can run xm console xen01 to access xen01's console, and users can SSH to [email protected] to also access this.

When you access the console, the screen is not refreshed; it will simply output whatever hasn't been output to a console user yet. Hence, pressing Enter to get a login: prompt, or Ctrl-L to refresh the screen, is something required.

Ctrl + ] closes the xm console window (at least in PuTTY)

Issues

No login prompt is seen on a recent kernel

Many recent kernels use in built new-style Xen consoles which live in /dev/hvc0. Console output, including a getty, needs to run on this device.

Ubuntu 12.04

• Rename /etc/init/tty1.conf to /etc/init/hvc0.conf
• Change the contents so the getty runs on hvc0 instead of tty1

There isn't any response on the console

Possible reasons for this include:

• There is no getty on the console (see above).
• This is a HVM node, e.g. Windows, and there is no serial console.
• There is someone else already logged in and viewing the console. Exit the console (Ctrl-]) and see whether there are any console processes by doing a ps. Generally, you will see one listed xm console xenXX.