Most servers have real serial ports on the motherboard, and also older desktop computers and laptops have it. There are four common types of serial ports for setting up a serial console for the computer running Xen:ġ) The computer running Xen has a built-in rs232 serial port (COM1) on the motherboard, with a DB9 serial cable connector. Types of serial ports on the computer running Xen On this another computer you can use USB-serial adapters. This can be another server, a desktop machine, or a laptop. Remember USB-serial dongles are NOT usable for serial console on the computer running Xen.Ģ) Another computer that views and logs the messages from the computer running Xen.

See below for types of supported serial ports. It needs to have a serial port for the serial console. Messages won't disappear from the serial console logs when the server powers off or reboots.Ĭomponents required for the serial consoleġ) The actual computer running Xen to debug/troubleshoot. Serial console to the rescue! Using a serial console you can log the full error and crash messages, and if you set up serial console logging to a file, you'll be able to easily check the logs later when you need them. That doesn't help you at all troubleshooting the actual problem. If your server is having problems and it crashes, you usually just see an empty VGA console when you go look at it. You can also leave the serial console up and running allowing you to log any errors that might show up later. Then you configure the laptop to listen on the serial port, and log all the Xen and Linux dom0 console boot messages to a file giving you a full log of the boot process and system operation. Then you setup a cable (or nowadays IP connection) between the Xen server and for example a laptop. What actually is a serial console? Basicly you configure Xen and/or Linux kernel to write the boot and console messages to a serial port as text. You can also paste the logged messages (as text) for online troubleshooting with other people. If your system doesn't start up, the display goes blank, the whole computer crashes during startup or during normal operation, serial console allows you to see and log everything that's happening to a text file and allows you to troubleshoot the issue much more easily. Serial console is a very good and important tool for debugging Xen and also Linux kernel problems. Configuring Xen to use and log to a serial console

Debian serial port terminal emulator