serial port issues on IBM xseries with FC4 and High Availability heartbeat

[Randy Grimshaw]

I am trying to run a linux high availability cluster (failover pair)
using serial as one of the heartbeats.

Due to numerous serial over-runs the systems are actually crashing
periodically.

This is a very frustrating development for a system intended to provide
HA. (certainly not ha ha ha).

I have updated to the latest bios.
I have checked RTS DTS XON XOFF etc.
This is happening with the stock and custom kernels.
This is happening on three pairs of servers.
The serial ports are detected as:
       Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision: 1.90 $ 32 ports, IRQ
sharing enabled
       serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A


Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

<><Randy




<><Randall Grimshaw
Room 203 Machinery Hall
Syracuse University
Syracuse, NY   13244
315-443-5779
rgrimsha at syr.edu