[rescue] Alpha SRM console oddness.

[Stephen Dowdy]

Daniel,

> console and typed "ps ax" at the console (no os was booted but PS was 
> listed in the help) and there was a process "dead-eater" listed as 
> waiting for "dead-beef".  I thought this was odd.  Anybody know what 
> this is?

Probably a component of the memory exerciser.  DEAD BEEF being a common
hexadecimal flag used for diagnostics.
 
I don't recall the exact commands, but it's something like:

	>>> memexer
	>>> diagstat

I've had to run the Memory Exerciser with multiple subprocesses (like 4 or
8) to really thrash a suspect system and expose some memory problems with it.

The SRM has a pseudo filesystem on it, you can use 'ls' like:

	>>> ls *exer*
	>>> ls *diag*

Commands, scripts and I/O files appear here.  You can 'cat' things, like:

	>>> cat el

this displays the "Event Log" (el), a buffer file that will have all
the POST diagnostics, including some that are suppressed from normal
display as well as output from diagnostic processes.

There's cool things in the SRM, but the FORTH based OpenBootProm still
makes a better ROM monitor IMHO.

--stephen
--
Stephen Dowdy - Systems Administrator - CS Dept - Univ of Colorado at Boulder
dowdy at cs.colorado.edu  --  http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~dowdy/signature.html