MAC Shutdown Procedure

Purpose

In the event it becomes necessary to power off the MAC, it needs to be done in the proper fashion in order to prevent possible damage to the disk drives in the bigmac computers. What follows is information on how to accomplish this.

Background

The MAC computer VME chassis actually contains three computers:

• (1) Motorola mv147 VxWorks computer (mac)
• (2) Force Sparc Solaris computers (bigmac0 & bigmac1)

The mv147 computers in the dbe, fbmux, fms & tracker contain no disk drives and can be turned off and on without fear of doing any damage to some file system. The MAC computer also contains a mv147 and no disk drive, but because it shares the same chassis and power-supplies with two other computers, the same can not be said. The MAC crate contains two additional computers that are actually complete Sparc workstations built onto a VME card. The only thing missing is the monitor and keyboard. Like any normal computer, you run the risk of causing file system problems for the bigmacs by just powering off the VME crate.

Therefore it is very important to properly shutdown both bigmac computers before powering-off or power cycling the VME crate.

Procedure

Here are the steps necessary to shutdown the MAC system.

1. Turn off both toggle switches.
   1. System power first, then the System Monitor
2. Kill both munch tasks in xcontrol.
3. Open a terminal and log into each of the bigmac computers, bigmac0 & bigmac1 one at a time. Become root and execute the 'halt' command.
   1. Make sure you are in the proper computer before typing halt.
      1. Type 'hostname' to verify your on the correct computer.
4. Once both computers are halted, power off the VME crate by switching off the black rocker switch in the lower-left side of the VME chassis.
5. Open the back of the main MAC rack and turn off the three-phase main power breaker located at the bottom right.
6. The digital rack is now completely powered off.

Debugging

It is possible to log into all three computers two different ways.

• mv147 mac:
  • You can log into the mac controller computer by simply typing  'rlogin mac'. It will ask for a 'VxWorks login:'. Use oper12m. The password is the same as the Linux oper12m accounts only you spell out the "meter" portion.
    • To log out of the mac, simply type 'logout' and you will be returned to your Linux prompt.

     

  • You can also obtain a shell login via the serial console port by logging into the lantronix terminal server. Type 'telnet lantronix' in a Linux terminal. You will get a bunch of welcome stuff and then a "Usernam>" prompt. Just type 'c <cr>. The prompt will change to "Local_18>". Now you can simple type 'c mac' (which is shorthand for connect to the mac port) and you now have the console port of the mac.
    • The advantage of this type of login is that you are not kicked out during reboots and thus you can watch the mac boot up and possible see any errors that may pop up during boot time. Also no passwords are needed for this type of login. The method also works to log into the dbe, fms and fbmux.
    • You exit this type of network connection by hitting the control-key and the ']' key at the same time. This will drop you back to a telnet> prompt. Hit the 'q' key to exit telnet.

     

• bigmac0 & bigmac1:
  • You can log into the bigmac computers using 'rlogin bigmac0' or 'rlogin bigmac1'. Once in, you type 'su -'. You will be prompted for the root password. It is still the old root password. From here you can give the 'halt' command.
    • Once the computer starts to shutdown your login connection will be dropped.

     

  • The second way to log into the bigmacs is to use the console login port. Currently that serial port is plugged into bohemia.
    • First 'rlogin bohemia'. You should not be asked for a password.
    • Then type 'tip hardwire'.
    • Once connected give an extra carriage-return. You should then see 'bigmac0 console login: '.
      • If you don't see a 'bigmac0 console login:' prompt and only see an 'ok' prompt, it means bigmac0 has crashed all the way down to the boot prompt. You need to get bigmac0 up and running by typing 'boot' followed by a carriage return. Eventually you should see the normal login prompt.
    • Log in as root and then give the 'halt' command.
    • Once again the advantage of this type of login is that you are not kicked out during reboots and thus you can watch it boot up and possible see any errors that may pop up during boot time.
    • You will need to move the serial cable from the bigmac0 to bigmac1 if you want to log into the console on bicmac1. This cable is located toward the bottom of the Force cards and is a ribbon cable connected to a very small 'd' type connector. bigmac0 is on the left and bigmac1 is on the right.
    • You exit this network connection by issuing a '~.' command.