# Serial Console and PCI-e peripheral cards



## freebuser (Jun 12, 2022)

I had an interesting experience last couple of days. This might have been discussed before, but just thought of sharing my experience anyway.

I have a Dell T110 server (now only sparingly used for backup) and T420 server.

Both have been setup with serial console through my laptop. Whilst the T110 always had the issue of unable to use the laptop keyboard for serial console input and also no serial output at login prompt. But never worried about the issue too much as I always access through SSH.

During the transition from T110 to T420 I also moved the SCSI LTO3 tape drive from T110 to T420 and never really used the T110. Recently I purchased an LTO5 SAS drive and populated that to the T420 and installed the LTO3 drive to the T110. During this setup, I noticed that the T110 did not show the keyboard issue and I was able to use the laptop keyboard which I was pleasantly surprised.

Later for some reason I re-did the SCSI card to s different PCI-e port and did the back up and shut the computer down (T110).

And last week, when I tried to boot the T110 and access via SSH, there was no connection.

Back to serial console and this time the bge0 network card complained about firmware issues and failed to initialise. The serial console also stopped at login: screen which made diagnosing and troubleshooting difficult.
Tried to find something similar on the internet and tried different loader values for no luck.

Then I moved the SCSI card to a different PCI-e port and voila everything worked perfectly.

It may be due to a conflict in the IRQ or something I don't know, but thought of sharing this information if someone has a similar issue with the bge0 complaining and/or serial console stuck in login: prompt, may be worthwhile removing or changing PCI-e cards.


----------

