Garbage characters in an SOL session

The default character encoding in Linux does not translate many of the characters sent over an SOL session, which might corrupt the BIOS screens display. If you are getting garbage characters while viewing or typing in an SOL session, check the following items:

• Make sure the serial port settings in your terminal emulation program match the settings specified in the blade server BIOS configuration. Also, make sure that Hardware Flow Control is enabled.
• Try setting the remote console text and keyboard emulation to VT100/220, instead of ANSI, in blade server BIOS. This might improve character display in SOL sessions. These setting are found in the blade server BIOS, under Devices and I/O Ports → Remote Console Redirection.
• To correct garbage or missing characters when using Gnome Terminal on a remote computer, complete the following steps:
  1. From the Gnome Terminal menu, select Terminal → Set Character Encoding → Add or Remove.
  2. From the list of available encodings that displays, select Western IBM850; then, click on the right-arrow button to add this encoding to the list of encodings shown in the menu and click OK.
  3. From the Gnome Terminal menu, select Terminal → Set Character Encoding → Western (IBM850).
  Using these settings for the Gnome Terminal should greatly reduce the amount of garbage or missing characters.
• Try a different terminal emulation program. Several programs are available, such as Telnet, Putty, or Hyperterm.
• Update the blade server service processor firmware (BMC or ISMP firmware). Latest firmware is available from http://www.ibm.com/systems/support/. Install the update by following the instructions that come with the update. See the Management Module User's Guide for additional information.
• Restart blade server system management processor (see the Management Module User's Guide or the Management Module Command-line Interface Reference Guide for instructions).
• Check the external link statistics for the switch module in I/O-module bay 1. Look for high packet loss or high packet error rates. See the Management Module User's Guide for additional information.
• Try to start an SOL session with another blade server in the BladeCenter unit. If you see garbage or missing characters with all blade server sessions, then suspect the management module.
• If the blade server supports local KVM, then switch the local command console to the blade server and type some characters. If you see the same garbage or missing character problem, then the problem is most likely with the management module.