[Beowulf] Problems with Microway Navion/SuperMicro server VGA display

[Prentice Bisbal]

Beowulfers,

Are any of you having problems with the VGA console on your Microway
Navion or Supermicro servers?

About 2 months ago, I received for new Microway Navion Servers with
Fermi GPUs. These servers are just rebranded SuperMicro servers with the
H8DGG-QF motherboard.

I had this problem when I first started working with these systems, but
then it disappeared. Now that I'm trying to reinstall the OS on a couple
of systems, I can no longer get a VGA console.

Here's the symptoms: When I plug in the monitor on my crash, cart, it
recognizes that there's a computer connected. Otherwise it would display
the self-test message, indicating that NOTHING is connected. However, a
split second after detecting it's connected to a computer, it goes right
into power saving mode  - the LED in Dell monitor's powerbutton goes
from green to orange.

The keyboard works, because the numlock LED goes on and off as expected.

The GPU cards are Tesla cards that don't even have a display port on
them, so I don't think I need to specify the on-board display in the
BIOS, and if this needed to be done, I would assume that Microway would
have done this before shipping the system.

 Am I making an ass out of myself by assuming this? I was able to get a
console on these systems at one point without tinkering with the bios.


-- 
Prentice Bisbal
Linux Software Support Specialist/System Administrator
School of Natural Sciences
Institute for Advanced Study
Princeton, NJ