Host Is Currently Unavailable

The message "Host is currently unavailable"  is usually seen when dialing into the Lucent PortMaster (TM) product or when connecting to a host from a terminal connected to the PortMaster.

The PortMaster supports 3 types of login services.

  • PortMaster (proprietary) 
  • Telnet 
  • Rlogin 

In order for a shell account to be connected to a host one of these three services must be configured in the login user's profile or in the port configuration, and that service must exist on the host.

If a login service is not configured in the user's profile then the login service specified in the port configuration will be used.

If  the message " Host Is Currently Unavailable " is displayed review  the following for a solution:

  1. If you are authenticating users with RADIUS make sure that security is enabled on the port.

  2. Command> set <port> security on
    Command> reset <port>

    The login service configured for a login user's profile by default is "PortMaster". If your host is not running in.pmd (PortMaster daemon) then you should change this to telnet or rlogin using the following
    command:
    Command> set user <username> service <portmaster|rlogin|telnet>
     

  3. No login service is specified in the user's profile and the login service in the port configuration does not exist on the host. 

    4. The login service configured on a port by default is "PortMaster", if your host is not running in.pmd (PortMaster daemon) then you should change this to telnet or rlogin
    Command> set <port> service_login < portmaster|rlogin|telnet>
    Command> reset <port> 
     

  4. In versions of the ComOS prior to 3.1 contained a known bug that would result in a "Host is currently unavailable" message. The following is a portion of the 3.1 release notes. 
    5. Ports are now properly reset if carrier is lost before 
the users session connects to the host.  Previously
if a host was unreachable and the user did not wait for
the TCP connection to timeout, the next user dialing
in would receive the "Host is currently unavailable"
message before being disconnected. The result was that 
the login prompt was not received.

    The solution to the issue with the known bug  was to upgrade the Lucent ComOs (TM) to a current release.