Discover the program that use serial port (Sherlock Holmes Case)

UNIX AIX
1

Hi,
I received a server that use AIX 5.x.

This server was installed from a company that doesnt exist now, and they dont leave information about it.

I only know that they installed a program that recieve information from some tty in a special format and as it is a tty, with some baud rate, data bits, etc. After that the program resend the info to another server.

My Sherlock Holmes task is to find out what program do this task, and try to find out the special format this program use, and from which tty port.

Any clues to find out this info?

Thanks !!!

2

Some starting ideas:

  • process table with ps -ef and check entries using a tty
  • lslpp -h to find out if there is a package installed at some given date
1 Like
3

A few other ideas:

  • there is only a limited number of tty s. Try the fuser command on all of them to find out which process(es) is(are) using it. The examine the found processes.

  • if you feel confident enough you can also use kdb (kernel debugger) to examine the processes properties although you will have to find out the details yourself, i don't have the documentation at hand.

  • receiving data from a tty means there has to be a physical serial connection to the server. check that and find out the corresponding tty device to further limit the number of devices to examine if you have physical access to the server.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

1 Like
4

I suppose its too much to hope they put something which uses a physical terminal device into /etc/inittab.

1 Like
5

Hi,
The command lslpp -h show me a lot of info, several programs was installed on that dates.
Looked in the inittab with no success, used fuser and found the program that use the tty, but nothing could found besides of that, configuration or other relevant info.
Also helped the use of ps -ef

Once found the relevant info, I opened a new question about GPS and tty Parameters
http://www.unix.com/aix/273339-connect-gps-serial-port-aix-5-x.html

I consider bouth questions succesfully answered and closed