[Info-vax] Opa0 in TIMOUT state

[abrsvc]

On Thursday, July 8, 2021 at 2:03:03 PM UTC-4, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2021-07-07, abrsvc <dansabr... at yahoo.com> wrote: 
> >
> > I would have expected the opa0 port to be in an Xoff state if the socket connection were severed rather than just a timeout state. Am I correct in this? 
> >
> I wouldn't be too sure about that. The error might be getting reported 
> within VMS at a much lower level than this, which is why I wondered what 
> the device status registers looked like under VMS for the emulated 
> console serial port. 
> 
> Assuming the emulator is running under another normal environment such as 
> Linux, have you looked to see what the socket state is on the operating 
> system running the emulator ? 
> 
> BTW, it's not fully clear from your original message whether the console 
> messages appear on OPA0: anyway but with an increase in the error 
> count, or if they are silently lost. Which one is it ?
> Simon. 
> 
> -- 
> Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP 
> Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.

Update:

This was not my machine and getting information 2nd hand is not the best situation.

I was unable to examine any specifics for the device from VMS as I didn't have access.  The sho device within SDA showed the timout bit set.
Since this was an emulated "system", there is no real opa0, just an emulated terminal.  I have been told that in this setup, the window does not need to exist and that any messaging just gets tossed by the emulator.  In this specific case, the OPA0 device started to accumulate errors "without any changes by the user".  I quoted the phrase, because I have been in this business long enough to know that "no changes" usually means "no changes that i will admit to..."

The solution suggested was to restart the terminal window for OPA0 and to try a "reset" operation (it uses putty) and then Crtl-Q.  This cleared it and since, no additional errors even with the terminal session terminated.

Conclusion:  I suspect that at some point, someone at the site started up the terminal and used it for something.  Prior to closing down the session, a CTRL-S was typed and that was the closing state.  The socket connection then froze thus no response seen by the emulator which was seen by VMS as a timeout.  Can't say for sure, but this is one way I think, that this could occur.

Thanks to all for the info.  Hopefully this string will be of value to someone else iff they run into a similar state.

Dan