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Ask Slashdot: Hardware for Headless Linux Boxes
Alan Hodgkinson asks:
"I would like to setup a bunch of Linux boxes without
keyboards and monitors. The systems must be
accessable/controlable via their serial ports, including
the ability to send them a hard reset. Sun Sparc hardware
has this feature. You can remove the keyboard and the
system will boot and send all its console output through
the serial port. You can even reset the machine by sending
a break to the serial port. Is there any hardware available
for PCs that will provides this functionality? (And that
works on a wide variety of PC hardware). ISPs must face
this problem. What do they do? Tips anyone?"
I Do this all the time, I place a video card in the system to get it up, then modify the inittab file. Then plug in a VT220 into com1. when all works I yank out the video card.
Hint- Use Slackware, Not RedCrap
Isn't that what the "console on serial port"
kernel option is for?
Isn't this partially a function of BIOS? I know a lot of PC's require the keyboard to be plugged in, and I've always assumed the same to be true for the video card. However, recently I've seen some IBM's that didn't didn't require the keyboard.
I have a couple of machines I run headless (without monitor and keyboard) at home, but I use Ethernet cards. When I want to shut them down, I remotely login, su to root, and issue the shutdown command with a one minute delay and in the background. It works with the reboot command too. One thing to be aware of, not all BIOS are tolerant of this, my third machine won't boot without a keyboard.
You could set up a script or application to monitor the serial port, and do a shutdown when it detected any sequence you chose.
Setting up a hard reset could be done, by connecting the reset pins on the motherboard to a connecter, but a hard reset means the file systems aren't shutdown cleanly, I'd avoid it.
You can get a keyboard terminator that will solve this problem.
Steve
When is the AGP version going to be available?
Not all of them. Old DELL boxes will work, for one. I can't vouch for the new ones, yet.
kernel can output on console, this is how they boot the sgi visual workstations, cause the kbd is usb. you will have to have a kernel that can do this, which no distro does, out of the box. so set the box up with video, then re-compile, and reboot. serial term should work fine.
as far as the kbd, in an award bios, go to the 'std config' section and look at the bottom. there is a choice about 'halt on ___ errors' set that to none. this way system does not care about kbd or video card not being there.
as far as power cycling, i am not familiar with the sun stuff you speakof, but hardware is unnneeded. you could modify the linux serial driver to signal init when a break was received. the problem with that is it requires the kernel to be running. i suppose this is why you want a hard reset. so, use a wire with more leads than you need to go to your term, and wire two of them to the mb reset switch. put a momentary on switch on the other end.... cheap and effective.
al
Open Firmware talks through the serial port by default. OF is found on Apples. Long live Apple!! (Or at least the clones and YDL!!)
Uh, not exactly. We tip into most of our servers and get a perfectly normal term(That would be on ttya). All of them E5K and E10K.
it's easier to buy a MKM sharing device. They let you connect 2-8 PCs to one box connected to one monitor, keyboard and mouse. A dial or software switch lets to cycle from PC to PC. Most of these support PS/2, DIN4, and VGA bootup protocols so each PC can reboot without no keyboard/no monitor errors whether it's the PC with focus on the switchbox. They run $150 up to $1000, and some are chainable/stackable or usable over IP. Then you can leave your kernal and inittab alone and even share the switchbox with NT or other OS servers.
Also check the motherboard and BIOS. I know Microchannel PCs from IBM have a console setting which you can point to com1 or com2. You still have to set up Linux to use this com as your console though, as linux ignores the bios.
I've also seen motherboards with modems built-in for a reset switch, so you can hook up the motherboard to a phone line and reset the PC from afar by dialing the number. Not secure at all, but neither is a PowerKey Pro.
You should be able to control the HW on the newer
Sun machines via the serial console, no matter the
OS. On the ExK boxen and newer Ultra servers the
firmware looks for
~ CNTL-SHIFT-{p,r,x} for
Power on/of
Reset (soft powercycle)
XIR(CPU) reset
in that order. These commands are VERY useful for
dealing with hung sun hardware remotely. Also the standard serial break should break you to the openboot prom monitor nomatter the OS. In a truely lights out operation, you just cant really beat server hardware, even if it is pricy.
Hawks
No, I think that was a port to hook a PS/2 Patch Cable to go up to your Keyboard port, so it can emulate a keyboard.
You can also build this hardware. Really simple, just get a 25-pin connector for parallel port. If you want to be able to powercycle more than 8 computers, you're going to need to put a multiplexer (or is that a demultiplexer, cant remember...) in here (you can cycle up to 128 computers this way). Otherwise, you dont need one. Use some resistors (1K work good), transisters (NPN, radio-shack variety, standard small black ones), and relays (5V microrelays work good). Wire up the relays and connect the output (normally open position) to the reset lines (where the reset switch normally goes) on the motherboards. If you want to do real powercycling, replace the 5V microrelays with something bigger (probably 12V power switch relays, but you'll probably need an external power supply.) and just put outlets on the relay (normally CLOSED).
Hmm, or you can make a simple ISA card if you have some printed circuit hardware... Come to think of it, I should get the ISA spec and try this....
What you need is a motherboard with a bios/chipset capable of running headless. To my knowledge there are none out for commercial consuption yet. I work for a company, and Intel has provided us with a demo version (with a whopping PIII on it to boot), and it works exactly like our Suns do. I'd expect ~6 months to see one of these avail for purchase, but it is coming.
palm pilots support direct serial interfaces. just add/uncomment the getty line in /etc/inittab and connect the pilot to the serial port to get a console.
As some people have understood, you need BIOS
e d_environment.htm o n_lan.htm
/ rwumob/mobstep.htm s ue17/stories/top8.htm / rwudt/REMSTEP.HTM
support for this. Lucky you, it looks like recent Intel
motherboards implement "Wake-on-LAN", "Wake-on-Ring" etc. features that should be the answer to your problem; globally it's called the "Wired for Management" (WfM) initiative, IBM + Intel + AMD etc.
Check these out:
http://www.intel.com/network/white_papers/manag
http://www.intel.com/network/technologies/wake_
http://developer.intel.com/ial/WfM/wfm20/design
http://developer.intel.com/solutions/archive/is
http://developer.intel.com/ial/WfM/wfm20/design
Remote reboot over the Net etc. Doesn't this sound just like what you want?
--Renaud
this works beautifully. once booted an SGI Origin 2000 this way (its virgin boot, it needed an IP address inputted via the console so we could then access it over the network).
I designed a large disparate Sun/Solaris network that uses Networked Terminal Servers and serial consoles to achieve just what you're trying to do. As you know, people suggesting Keyboard/Monitor switches or simply setting "Serial on console port" have not ever really managed a large network :-). I have thought a lot about this kind of support in Linux.
:)).
:) then you have the same level support as the Suns.
I think all you need is BIOS support for a serial console. The OpenBIOS project is at http://www.freiburg.linux.de/openbios/ (I don't know whether this is the canonical home page, but that was what google took me to
Then, add support for recognising the "break" signal with the Linux "serial on console port" option, and getting it to always bring it down to your OpenBIOS 'OpenBoot' prompt, if linux detected an OpenBIOS PROM. Assuming that that code never breaks
It is important to note that whilst it seems to be like old faithful, the break signal/stop-a is maskable - run "kbd -a disable" on Solaris 2.x to see this! (I don't know whether this sets some hardware options, or whether it just turns off recognition of it). Enterprise Servers (250 - 10000) have a keyswitch with a "lock" position which does the same thing, which of course is a much better solution.
A word of caution, however - if you are using this in a data centre or equivalent, with a multiplexor or Network Terminal Server, if they fail, their dying gasps tend to look like "break" signals and bring all the connected servers to their OpenBoot prompts. Not good.
why the heck would you spend 50 bucks to 'trick' the keyboard port when crappy KBs run 10 bucks???
I use the Cybex AutoBoot Commander 4XP at work. It has several EXCELLENT features... One, it is very multiplatform. You can have a single Mac/PC/Sun keyboard/mouse/monitor (the monitor has to be VGA, but mix 'n match the others) and the first control box can handle up to 14 (I believe... maybe 15) machines. You can get cards/cables to control serial terminals, Suns, Macs, or regular PC's. You can also get up to 3 additional cards to add other terminals (heads). And cascading cards are available, allowing the head unit to control other head units... cascading to a maximum of 4096 computers.
It cost around $2000 to control 13 machines, which was more than compensated by removing extraneous monitors/keyboards.
It also solves your other problem... booting up without a keyboard attached. It always runs the proper signal for the machine to detect the input devices.
Well, I'm not anonymous, but not registerd ;). Console-Swiches suck, because the systems can't be remote controlled. How about a new way ? Put PC-Anywhere and Polycon in a mixer, and there it is ... The Remote Console with graphics, keyboard and mouse ...
... I'm german ...
Lets think about the upcoming of the TFT-Displays and Digital Ports for them. There should be a possibility to attach an external Box to the Keyboard-Port, Mouse-Port and the Digital Graphics Port. This Box should store the Digital Image in a
Buffer and transmit the differences between two stored Images via Network to a remote Console-Software like PC-Anywhere. Keyboard-Input and Mouse-Movements should go back to the Box via Network, and should then be send to the server through its native input-ports. I've been looking for a solution like this on Cebit99, but nobody had something like that. Does anybody know about a solution like this ?
Ciao, Sven
PS: Sorry for my english
All modern Macs have Open Firmware and run Linux. They will boot with out monitor or keyboard. You can control the pre-boot process with Open Firmware via a serial terminal. Think of it as the Mac version of BIOS + LILO. The machines power off via software, and there are cheap devices that respond to various signals, like a phone ring, to power on the machine via ADB.
I beleive for the boot rom on the eithernet card to work, the bios has to have support for it. I know that on some IBM macheines you can set the boot sequence to use the network device. On some machines you can set the address of the boot room from the bios setup, which could then use the boot room on the eithernet card.
If you just want to be able to safely leave the
mouse, keyboard, and monitor off, there's a little
device called a "Guardian" that will attach to
the keyboard and mouse ports and keep 'em alive.
Then when you need to hook up a physical keyboard
or mouse, you just plug 'em into the guardian and
go. We use this on all of our servers - even the
ones with keyboards/mouses - because (especially
on NT) there may be no other way to gracefully
reboot a system.
If you're looking for something programmable, you
could use a box from Nortel - they several products to let you access serial and parallel ports from one intelligent device, and also allow you to control power. I'm sure there are other vendors as well. Using something like this, you can telnet into the management device and then communicate with the ports of all attached devices - makes a good out-of-band management device.
However, as has already been pointed out, that doesn't get you bios messages, if you're looking for that, unless the motherboard supports it. Don't see why you'd *need* that though - you can control power from the nortel box...
And will buy at leaset 100 of them this year only.
If this works without lockups - the PC Vendor who sell PCs will be my vendor.
I am not joking about the number - this is conservative estimate.
Nilanjan
Why hasn't a bios maker put this feature in before?
One of its developers (a NetBSD guy, you can read an Interview with him on daemonnews) dropped some words in a mailinglist about this:
IIRC he said some had it in the past and he fears they may be put it back in what would probably kill this product.
3Com makes the total control chassis, which
can include a pc running bsdi. The chassis
can also include a device for power management
and another device to handle console access.
I think Cisco makes or is designing a pc
running linux that fits into an enclosure
the size of a 2500.
I just looked at the specs for the DIMM-PC 486, which uses AMI-BIOS, and it seems to indicate that there are options to boot without a keyboard or a monitor... It won't complain on either account. It would be nice if they allowed you to choose Serial I/O for keyboard and Video, though, and simply have it switch that off just before the BIOS starts the OS.
you need one of those Wake-on-Lane ethernet cards, and ATX power supply that will turn on and off with a specific network packet. I have both. but sometimes, when my box lock up badly, it simply won't work. i had to go to the back of the power supply and manually turn off the power and then turn it on again. so i guess the box has to be not stone dead for these wake-on-lane to work.
i has some weird intel server called an altserver that had some bios option for console on a serial port, never did find out what you cold do with it but before i sold it on
:)
till - lazy
VA Linux systems says their VArServer 500 has
serial BIOS and that San Mehat has written a server management client for Linux that connects to it.
It boots fine without a video card. It may hang if you don't have a keyboard connected, but you can usually just change an option in the BIOS and it will ignore the missing keyboard. There's no problem booting without video or keyboard, it's just that you can't change BIOS settings and you won't get console output (unless you set up Linux or whatever to use the serial console, but that still doesn't give you access to the BIOS).
TA
Ages ago, a company called Logicraft (now Microtest) had a product named Omniware (IIRC, this may be wrong as the units were purchased long before I began working here) which provided similar function. These were designed to allow people to remotely access some of our library's DOS-based databases (as in the stuff you search for journal article citations in, like ERIC, etc.)
The unit wasn't serial port controled, but worked through the network. You had to run a special program from one of our VAXen (now one of the Alpha's) that could only be accessed by someone with an account and it would connect to the box. The box would reboot automatically on connect (needed for what it was doing) but the console was redirected to your telnet session.
The whole setup was based on a 386 with just shy of 4MB Ram. The unit had no internal HDD (booted from RARP, but also understood BootP and MOP) and had two network cards plus a seperate card which redirected the input (had a cable comming from it which connected to the PC's keyboard port.) There was also a unit with a 2x20 character LCD panel which used one of the external bays. It was the brains behind the whole thing.
Disclaimer: I make no claim that the hardware described is even still in production in any way because I really don't know. Also, these were for a specific purpose and they may not make a unit to do what the asker wants. It is provided in the interest of providing other possibilities.
Once you get the serial port console working, What you really want is several of these...
r vers_index.html
HP Secure Web Console
http://eproducts.hp.com/webconsole/
Hook up your RS-232 console to this, Then into hubs with you other 99 servers and ONE PC running your favorite www browser. Each console has it's own IP address, and they can all be accessed from the PC securly. This is a lot simpler that a 100 position RS232 switch.
The HP A-class HPUX server has these built into the motherboard. It has two lan connections, one for the normal server and one for the console.
http://www.datacentersolutions.hp.com/aclass_se
The problem is most likely the cable. I have a 4 port omnicube with a 21" sony screen, and I don't notice any distortion between directly connecting the monitor to my machine or having it go through the kvm. The reason is that I use ultraspec cables....www.ultraspec.com. It's $35 for ONE HD15 cable (I had to get 5 of them). I've tried just about every brand, and I've never seen better quality cables. They're also the most expensive ones around, so I guess you get what you pay for. The omnicube supports up to 1600x1200 btw.
Ok, so we're the poor bastards who came up with this and are building it. As some of you were able to figure out, that's a PS/2 keyboard port on the back of the board meant to jumper to the PC keyboard port..
So what started as a couple of guys needing a decent way to manage cheap fast hardware in their webservers, seems to have turned into a small tornado of interest... I don't know who told who and how it got to slashdot. We were hoping to keep a lid on this until it was finished....
Present status is that it's basically functional but has some rough edges and needs some 'usability' help... The coding and design has been taking a back seat to 'real work' because there are bills to pay... This is sadly still the case so try not to lean on us too hard please..
Herb.
http://www.realweasel.com/ A dumb name for a dumb answer to a really dumb question.
Quite right... I distinctly recall (though it's not right in front of me in the moment) that the 2.2 kernel allows for a serial console.
Posted by Fleeno:
All you need is a machine that doesn't care that it doesn't have a video card or keyboard. I have several machines like this, they complain a little, but boot regardless.
You can then use the "console on serial port" option in your kernel or just connect via your network.
There are some newer motherboards that don't need a keyboard to boot. I've done it.
--
Get your fresh, hot kernels right here!
a good place to start is to look on ebay, inside the computers/terminals section.
-herb
your mom!
If you have two linux machines next to each other, what you can do is use null modems to connect the serial ports togather. For resets, you can wire a relay to the parrell port and the reset contacts on the motherboard. When one needs a reboot log into the other and execute the commands to do so.
Of course with as stable as linux is, you will probably forget you have that ability, spend 2 weeks trying to remember where the broken machine is, and then reboot it from the console.
. I'm pretty sure you can do the opposite, and telnet to the box to access it's ports. What? You mean that people use terminal servers for other then accessing consoles? We have several 64 port terminal servers in out lab, nearly all the equipment we have has a serial port on that is connected in turn to a terminal server so we can telnet to the console.
We build our own hardware, and let me assure you that working serial port consoles are first on the agenda for those who write the prom code. We can't imangine debugging without printfs that go directly to this serial port. (Yes, we have heard of source level kernel debuggers. We have been paying $$$ for them for a few years. rumor has it that two weeks ago someone finially got it working.) Even if we did have debuggers, the serial port is the perfect place to controll things when your network hub dies (the hub is built in so that several processors can talk via ethernet internally. Or at least that is an explination I think the NDA allows me to give)
In short, you can use a terminal server to access console ports. I didn't know they were used for anything else.
We use a Shiva here at work to remote console many boxes - Sun and Intel w/FreeBSD & Linux.
After talking to someone at Cybex, they said the 4XP (the modular one that will do Sun, et al) will support higher bandwidth, while the smaller Autoview (the one we own) will not. Either way, I think Cybex products are great!
-Bunco
Can't you just connect a couple of serial port pins to the reset switch?
You can probably get one for free. Try universities, businesses, or government offices. They give 'em away all the time when they upgrade old hardware.
It's actually pretty easy to support this, if you have the right hardware. I support roughly 100 Linux/x86 servers spread across the US, and hardware makes a big difference.
First, by and large, remote rebooting doesn't matter as much as you might expect. Over the last year, we've only had 5 or so actual lockups in remote locations. Generally, under Linux, when something dies, it's dead, with a total hardware failure. For the most part, power supplies and hard drives are to blame, although we've lost a motherboard or two. Avoid cheap drives and power supplies -- Seagate Barracudas work almost flawlessly for us. Frankly, we've had more problems with spontanous reboots that hard lockups.
If you're paranoid (we are :-), and want to do things right, then the first thing to look at are Intel's server boards. We use the T440BX and the N440BX (single/dual P2 boards). They both support serial consoles in the BIOS, they have built in SCSI, Ethernet, and VGA, they have a on-board hardware watchdog, they have excellent hardware monitoring built-in, and they support remote reboot/power-off/power-on, if you can figure out the protocol to use. I have a driver for 2.2 that supports quite a few of the monitoring/management features of the board. Mail me for info.
Scott
Most BIOSes I've seen have an option to turn that off. Look for a "Keyboard Installed" option.
The ones that don't tend to be more recent, and also tend to autodetect that the keyboard is missing and deal with it.
I've set up several headless servers this way. Granted, it was a pain when I needed to play in the BIOS, but at other times, it worked out fine.
The Netwinder (www.netwinder.org) supports headless operation. If there's no keyboard detected, the Firmware (equiv. to x86 BIOS) will switch to the serial port. Of course, Netwinders are rather more expensive than low-end x86 boxes, so this may not help you.
/dev/console has the correct device numbers (or make it a symlink to ttyS0).
I don't think it's possible to do a hard reset from the serial port, but there might be some way to add this. I believe the Netwinder also has a hardware watchdog timer, which would remove some of the need for a reset line.
(My Netwinder runs headless, but it's within arm's reach of my desk so I haven't had to worry about remote resetting).
As others have mentioned, compile in serial-console support in the kernel, and make sure that your
the insight manager remote access card..
it's actually a complete 386 on a card. It's operating system agnostic so it'll work fine with linux.
In fact it will work better with linux than with NT as the card can only capture text mode screen's - not much use with NT.. but perfect for linux/*bsd/sco.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
Turn on serial console, and use something like a Cisco 2511 as a terminal server. For the remote reboot stuff, you can simply use the above link and get telnet-able power control. Pretty neato.
You can have a logging machine connect to each serial port of each server via the 2511 and use that for logging the console information. So whomever says that you cannot get all the boot info from a linux box remotely was very wrong.
Good luck
-- There is no sig line, only Zuul.
Why don't you look for CabltCube (neato bleue Cubes that run linux on a R4000n processor -,) They come with serial control (then you'll just need to tweak the Kernel). They do just what you want. more info can be found @ http://www.cobaltnet.com
Can also take a look @ endebed systems from motorola - but linux dev on those cutties is SLOW http://www.mcg.mot.com
none Yet.
(sorry I didn't read all the answers, may be
someone already pointed that out).
hi,
some guys from compaq showed us a card which
was designed for their pc servers. it allows
distant administration using a modem, and redirects all bios output to a comm port.
it also saves the last page of text in case
of reboot (useful for bsod).
I don't know if it is NT only stuff (I mean
the card was plugged into an NT server, could
there be specific drivers for it, or is it just
bypassing the OS ?) .
Price was about 6000 French Francs (that should
be around $1000 -- or less)
I recall seeing one of my older boxen boot without a keyboard.
"Press to continue"
I thought it was a bad joke, but in retrospect, I suppose you could send it any old key press through a serial port.
--Mark
> the next problem is what to do with all the
> serial cables? I hav no idea! Maybe there are
> some type of hub...
What you need is a terminal server - we have a bunch of (now idle) Chase IOLan (www.chaser.co.uk) rack boxes that take 16 serial ports each and turn them into telnet connections (we used to use them to handle dial in from individual modems for PPP before things like the Ascend Max and the Portmaster existed). I'm pretty sure you can do the opposite, and telnet to the box to access it's ports. You certainly can on some equivalent boxes (Xylogics Annexe, Equinoxe etc...). They are probably pretty cheap to pick up now. We paid about $1300 each for ours, but that was a few years ago now.
Warning: "High-speed" (>19200bps) sucks a bit on the Chase. The older boxes in general have pretty crummy UARTs, since they were designed to handle 16 vt100/wyse terminal sessions, not 16 simultaneous 33600 downloads.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
Umm, yes - they are (were originally) used as comms servers for terminals :-)
Plug your 64 telesales staff into your unix ordering system from their vt100's? Wire up your college terminal room so that users have access to a generic telnet prompt to access your hosts?
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
My only problem with my Omniview Pro 8 that I use to control the 6 machines under my desk, is that after switching around, when I get back to the one win95 machine, I have to redetect the mouse to get the scroll wheel on my logitech cordless to work again. Other than that, it's alot nicer than the old 6 port AT keyboard/serial mouse only box I used before.
Although, the PROM on the SGI Visual Workstations lets you use a serial console to change settings and such. X flys on the 320's too, even though the server isn't accelerated yet. At the last MDLUG meeting, they had one up and running Linux, with GNOME and all the eyecandy turned on, like transparency and such. Even dragging windows around didn't slow it down...
The ISP I run uses a Rose Electronics KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) switch... It lets us control a bunch of different Linux (an one NT) boxen with one mouse, keyboard and monitor. This works better in my opinion than the serial solution cause you can get X as well as console.
I admin servers in New Jersey and San Francisco. I am in Ohio. We have a portmaster 2 terminal server on the net we can telnet to, then get a serial based login prompt to the machines. The suns talk to the serial from the very beginning. You can get what equates to the BIOS setup screen over the serial. No octopus monitor switch does that for you. And no monitor switch helps you if you're in Ohio and the machine is in New Jersey. New Intel Dual PII/III boards have a bios feature that puts the info out a serial, just like the suns. This may be the Phoenix Bios that others have talked about. A friend has several of these. over a serial connection, the machine boots and you can enter the bios screen. You can get a lilo prompt. That's the kind of control you need over remote machines.
I work for a mid-size ISP and we use switch boxes. Make sure to spend the money on a digital switch box as you will soon find yourself very unhappy with the analog ones.
/sbin/shutdown?
The 'console on serial port' option in the 2.2.x kernels is most likely a cheaper route. And do you really need the three-finger salute when you have
And if you really need to power-cycle a machine, maybe look into the SNMP-manageable power strips.
Searches of dejanews and the kernel archive revealed (paraphrased) "yes, this has been seen before". I recall finding reference to a patch, but I either could not get it to work, or could not find the patch.
I am sure I tried and failed with a 2.1.xx kernel, but the box with trouble went into use long before 2.2 came out, and I have not bothered to upgrade it to test if it boots correctly without a keyboard because: It currently works fine; a trip would be required to disconnect the keyboard plugged into it.
I did find for sale "keyboard simulators", basically terminators to plug into the keyboard socket, but they were much more expensive than an actual keyboard.
Also, be careful with the switchbox solution. The more expensive switchboxes simulate the presence of a keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc., even when switched away from that box. However, the cheaper switchboxes do no simulation, and just have a switch with no fancy electronics. The cheap ones often work fine, though.
The moral? It might be worthwhile to test your headless setup on a prototype box, before investing in a whole set of boxes that will have issues.
BTW: My Psion S5 makes the best portable vt100 I have used. Palm Pilots can also work, but the keyboard on the S5 gives it a big advantage over the Pilots for actual work, as opposed to just monitoring output.
I would like one ... if I can get one cheap. Having used exclusively PC's I know absolutely nothing about terminals and would like to learn ...
support gun control: take guns from cops
Well, to boot a system without the keyboard
;)
or/and display hooked up is dependant on the
specific BIOS the motherboard uses.
Usually you can just find an option that says
"ignore errors" or something like it, you'll
know when you see it.
=-kiOwA
=-kiOwA-> EOF
It is worth noting that there is now an (unsupported) patch to get VMS 7.2 going on the once 'NT only' Multia workstation. This had been rumoured to be floating around at Digital for a long time...but DEC was so far up MS's...err, well, anyway.
...very nice management tools.
Compaq has (sorta) corrected this problem. They were kind enough to provide VMS for hobbyists for free and recently extended that to the most recent version (7.2) and to Alpha, and to most of the layered products (DEC Compilers! Yay!) Unfortunately they still want ridiculous sums if you want to use it for business.
http://www.openvms.digital.com/hobby.html
There are links on there to the Montagar site, and from there you should be able to find media kits and the driver patches if you're at all interested. There are also 2 or 3 commercial products from other manufacturers participating in the hobbyist licensing...I highly recommend Multinet as a TCP/IP stack. Derived from BSD/Tahoe
--Rubinstien
Are you involved in the NetBSD project? Just wondering.
Great to see a local company doing some really cool stuff. I was once a canuck.com customer. Neat!
Be smart and work to create. Don't ride on the backs of others.
I have a similar box, it it old k75 o/c to k90 (mobo doesn't support 50 bus) on via pa-2011 (ami bios). I control it over network (ssh), but i guess you can go serial way if you wish. For it to boot without monitor, you have to change display option from VGA to NONE in Bios. be sure to remove the video card, it will not work with card in there. Regarding the keyboard, remove the option "HALT on keyboard error" from bios. That should get you to boot up, from there on it should be simple.
Speaking as someone who has worked for an ISP, I'm going to disagree with you. SSH/Telnet access is BY NO MEANS a substitute for console access (although it's obviously useful in it's own right).
:-)
We had a couple of machines located in London, about 60 miles from our office, and having console access via a terminal server saved several trips to London - and if you've ever tried to drive in London, you'll appreciate how important that is
Of course, those machines were Sun boxes, where that sort of thing is trivial. But this new Phoenix BIOS sounds like it might the answer to a lot of prayers.
Are your boxes going to be plugged into any sort of network? If so, why do you need a terminal; I run headless boxes all the time with no keyboard that I control entirely from a ssh or telnet connection.
You can even dump syslog to another box if you require.
Also, remember a serial port is just another tty (ttyS*). Therefore, you can plug a terminal into it and not worry about the local tty's.
And if rebooting is important, you can always ssh in and reboot. If the box crashes you'll have to yank the power regardless, so you could easily build a box that has a switch for each computer; flip the switch to kill the power.
A little bit of hacking-but isn't that what linux is about?
-- DrZaius - Minister of Sciences and Protector of the Faith
This is not what I was pointing out. It seems that this fellow is not doing that. And besides, a box with a terminal plugged into the serial port is still not going to boot with a wanky kernel.
I could not imagine 18 terminals for 18 servers either; I prefer to telnet to all of my shells. Especially since a lot of the boxes I look after are cities away.
Welcome to a PC world in which every advertisment for a new computer features "It is soooo easy."
-- DrZaius - Minister of Sciences and Protector of the Faith
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't serial consoles handled by inittab? I've run terminals off of a serial port since 2.0.34 till now. The kernel has never had any effect, as long as I had serial support in the kernel.
Why would you only want a serial console? Does it make that much difference to be running getty? I've never thought so. Besides, this way if the box dies you can pull it off the shelf and put a keyboard and monitor onto it and fix 'er up.
-- DrZaius - Minister of Sciences and Protector of the Faith
It is possible with the latest kernels to redirect the console to a tty at boot time. It can be made to do this manually or automatically. See "CONFIG_SERIAL_CONSOLE" in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/Configure.help for information. You will have to install and configure your boxes normally, but after that you can set them up to do what you want with this option. Also, make sure that your boxes have a BIOS that allows you to disable keyboard checking at power up.
"LinuX - Dropping the c u r t a i n on Windoze." -- Vee Schade, vschade at mindless dot com
Yes, it's imperative to add inline suppressors if you have a box that is prone to doing this. Some boxes send 'break like signals' when you power them off as well. (grr!)
"No good deed goes unpunished"
The best solution we ever found was -
1) recompile linux (2.1+) kernel to 'use serial port as console' which means if you boot sans video card you get a serial console.
2) set mobo for 'ignore errors on boot'
3) use an APC powerstrip with serial and telnet access to powering on/off outlets individually
4) use a portmaster connected to all the serial ports and the APC.
dialback only modem access into the portmaster as well as network access
Most of the sites we set up were colo sites, or in locked secure server rooms so remote access was a boon.
Any questions?
"No good deed goes unpunished"
NT has nothing to do with it. The card needs a 'wake on lan' feature (ie: intel 100 managed). When it sees a 'magic packet' (a packet addressed to it's MAC with the contents being it's MAC repeated 16 times) the card triggers the ATX motherboard.
I own a ServSwitch (made by Black Box), and they
can use either the normal cables or special coax
cables. The coax ones go pretty far (up to 100
feet, I think). I have a 20 ft cable connecting
the machine to the switchbox, and a 10 ft cable
that goes from the switchbox to the monitor.
I run my system at 1280x1024 and 1600x1200, and
I haven't had any problems with video distortion
or anything like that.
Black Box says that the coax reduces the noise,
and to me it looks like that it does indeed make a
difference.
Doug
p.s. I don't work for Black Box or anything like
that, I just figured someone might find this
useful.
message ends. over and out.
So what, you ask? Ah. Imagine that you have a box which you can't touch. You can't see it. You can only contact it through the net. What happens when it crashes? How do you turn it on or off? What happens if a device fails and it won't boot? You need the BIOS to send all messages over the serial console too. (Not to mention recieve things like reboot messages via that same console.)
x86 BIOSs don't tend to support this feature. My company bought a 4 way Xeon from Micron ( http://www.micron.com/) and it had this ability in it's Pheonix BIOS. And Denarius Enterprises, Inc ( http://www.denarius.com/) recently told me they will sell machines with this option as well. So others will probably sell you such machines -- you just have to ask.
This
Black Box makes several external power switch options that can be controlled by serial and/or touch tone. But they're not cheap.
The other way to go might be to find a UPS that can cycle the power based on commands sent to its serial port. I know Best and some APCs can do this.
-- Spring: Forces, coiled again!
Hopefully the following (found via google) will help.
http://www.ssc.com/lj/issue36/console.html
development.lombardi.com
First thing, to be able to boot whithout a graphicsadapter you will need a PC with an Award BIOS. The Award BIOS has a seting _NO_VIDEO_INSTALLED_ .
Second you will have to compile a 2.2 kernel with (or FreeBSD) with serialconsole option. To be able to login via your serialconsole you must also modify your inittab to run a getty on that console.
Now comes the tricky parts. To be able to send an hard reset you will need special hardware, thats not good. An alternative solution would use some type of watchdog software. The basic function of a watchdog is to perform a softreset if the machine hangs (simplified that is).
the next problem is what to do with all the serial cables? I hav no idea! Maybe there are some type of hub...
Wonder when my grammar will improve?
i've set up a small farm of linux boxes for serving http, dns, and smtp/pop for employease. i've been using the HP LPr machines: 2U form factor, twin cpu configuration. they have a serial/console out that you can configure linux to use. we are going to send all console interfaces to a cyclades console management system. i'm not sure the LPr's support remote power cycle signals via this interface, but I know the Dell Poweredge 6350's we're using do. unfortunately, these machines currently run NT since Netscape Enterprise server is not yet ported to linux. however, we have it from an insider that Enterprise server will be available in the fall. in the meantime, we are going to test out the quad-xeon-cpu 6350's as linux servers, and will find out if its console interface will actually work with linux.
PS: Neither of these boxes care if they are headless, handless, or tailless.
straightballin' in the ATL
Of course, if the machine is too hosed to reboot, this obviously won't work. A hardware solution is required that turns the break signal into a hard reset.
:) (remember the good old triple fault?)
The software solution won't work any worse than Ctrl-Alt-Del (also handled in software). Also, sure, you can reboot from an interrupt context, in fact, it's often hard to *avoid* rebooting when you're in there
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Yea, but how often has Linux crashed on you? .. like really gone dead.. not just an X problem that newbies whine about 'Linux crashing'.
How 'ISPs do it' is just as this guy said (and I was going to mentiong too, seeing all this guff about serial switchboxes), by using ssh (or telnet if ya desperate)
Okay for your *particular* purpose when you're hacking the kernel it might require a more 'thorough' solution, but IMHO for most people's uses (as I'm assuming this person's original request was, as he said about ISPs) is that ssh and telnet will work fine for controlling multiple machines.
Delphis
I think it has to do with being a dedicated workstation or server. Even my Multa which was design to run NT still, gives me the message Keyboard not found sending all I/O to serial port 1.
The problem is that PC hardware is designed for being a PC and not a headless server.
But on the other hand even my 486 BIOS's allow for no keyboard/no video/no disk.
One day people will learn the folly of Winbloze, Linux Rules!
If you have a lot of computers that you need to do this with within the same organization, and are willing to accept a power off via a UPS in lieu of pressing the reset button, our company (Global Maintech) has a solution that will work over a LAN or WAN.
It's actually designed to be a full management product that allows remote access to your consoles, along with the ability to run scripts that scan for stuff and automatically post alerts or do things in response to messages.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Note that there is also remote keyboard/mouse/video boxes that support very long cable lengths, and some that even bridge to a network, essentially acting as hardware remote control.
Given that you can get a switcher pretty cheap nowdays, this might be a better solution than RS232.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Actualy, I thought Compaq and HP servers already had this special hardware built-in. Usually it's used over a network, but some Compaq server allow you to access "managablity" through RS232.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Sounds like you want one of these. They're not on the market yet, though, but they look super-cool.
The whole idea is to be able to have console access. You plain and simple cannot do this over telnet. If you are running 18 boxes like I am and are hacking networking drivers or other OS things, it is a pain to debug a crashed kernel or faulty hardware over the network when there is no networking stack (crashed kernel). You need true console access (SGIs and Sparcs do provide this). PCs don't (as of yet).
KVMs are the only solution I have used reliably.
When I was running an ISP I managed to get fairly close to the idea with PC hardware running NetBSD. NetBSD has had for a long time the ability for both the kernel and the bootloader to use a serial port for the console. I still had a switch box to get video and keyboard access to deal with the BIOS, but this wasn't that frequently needed, so I saved a lot of trips to the server room.
We did have a couple of SPARCs running NetBSD as well, which of course Just Work when it comes to serial consoles.
I understand that some Intel server motherboards have a BIOS that will also talk to the serial port. Given this, you'd be set.
Another idea that a friend of mine was looking at was to build a little ISA card with a serial port on it that looked to the computer as if it was an MGA and keyboard. It would have to have logic to generate appropriate VT100 sequences to get the screen updated correctly for those things that assume the screen is fully addressable, but that shouldn't be a big deal. And, of course, it would have access to the reset line on the ISA bus (or it could plug into the reset button header on the motherboard itself). It would basically be a little console computer, much like the sort you used to have on minicomputers.
Once you've got some sort of serial console working, I suggest using Paul Vixie's rtty program to monitor the machine. I bought a couple of eight-port BOCA serial boards and dropped them in an old 486 to make a console server.
cjs
The world's most portable OS: http://www.netbsd.org.
The Linux kernel can handle serial consoles, but you'd probably have some issues with the BIOS. All Intel BIOSes that I've seen will go on strike if you try to boot without a keyboard.
I suppose the next best thing to no monitor/keyboard would be one monitor/keyboard. Just get a KVM switch and some el-cheapo video cards for all your boxen.
HTH
--
The dog ate my
I have four systems that I work with regularly in my office. I have a four banger Cybex switch box to control them. The basic idea is, you spend all that money for the egro keyboard, and 21" screen, you can use just one set of peripherals to control all the systems. There are monitor, mouse, and keyboard cables running from the back of each box to the Cybex. Then, the keyboard, monitor and mouse that I use run to a different set of ports on the Cybex, and BAM! There ya go, four systems, neatly running, with one set of periphs to control them.
YMMV, of course, but I even use this solution with my home network. One more thing, you can set the Cybex to "scan." View one system for 5 seconds each, and switch to the next in line. They really are a neat trick, but a bit pricey.
Heart, Hands, Honour
"Trouble is, just because it's obvious doesn't mean it's true"
"Trouble is, just because it's obvious doesn't mean it's true"
--Terry Pratchett
I didn't think that Linux supported DOC. I've got a videoless, keyboardless single board embedded system running off a DOC with ethernet, but it's running QNX.
Has M-Systems added linux support?
My Psion 3a works great as a portable VT100 too. I am going to use it as the console for the box I'm putting in my car. No working TCP/IP support on the S3 series, but that's what the Linux host is for.
I use the GPL'd "Nfsc" file-server and vt100-emulator ver 5.4. X/Y-modem don't work right in this version, but I can NFS mount the S3a's ramdisk and memory cards with a provided client!
Don't most PC BIOS's have the option for console redirect (I always wondered what to use it for). I think it will allow the proper OS to handle console work via COM1...
technical whipping boy, Occam's Strop (think about it...)
Yes,
= ========================================== =========
You can do a lot of hacking in software if that's what you like doing. If you need to get work done and can't spare the time get an Omniview Pro 8 port or 16 port ( or 4 port ) whatever you need.
It is available out of the usual catalog places - Microwarehouse is one (www.warehouse.com).
I got an 8 port for ~400$, each set of cables costs about 12$. I am controlling a mixture of NT and Linux boxes, 6 of them under my desk, all from an onscreen control console. You can use the switch on the Omniview box to switch keyboard, mouse,monitor between machines. An LED display shows where you are in the sequence. In the onscreen display you can edit the defaults and enter your host names.
You can daisy chain these to control some large multiple of 16 - 128 boxes or some such.
To reboot just switch to the machine and give a three-finger salute, works like a charm. I haven't really found I need it all the time. Only to reboot. But it is *extremely* useful when you have to reboot. At other times I find am just using telnet and pseudo terminals.
Good Luck.
Nitin Borwankar
===============================================
The more idiot-proof you make it the smarter the idiots get.
Hi,
I ran across a link in one of the user posts yesterday that led me to a web site that actually sells serial console cards for PCs.
The setup is, this is an 8-bit ISA card that responds to the system like an MDA card. I'm guessing it intercepts writes into the text buffer of the MDA and outputs VT100 escape sequences or something. At least, that's what I'd do if I were them.
Unfortunately, I don't have the URL handy, but I emailed the company (whose email is apparently different from the URL at which these cards reside, and I'm too friggin' lazy to go knocking about trying to root this out right now), and asked them to post in this thread so they may be roundly slashdotted.
I'm going to pick up at least a couple of these things. Neat hack.
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
The reason you don't want a getty running on /dev/ttyX in this situation is that /dev/ttyX doesn't exist. You've removed VGA support from the kernel, and leaving init to try to run all of those gettys will result in much spewage on one's (serial) console as they race to their death.
Kid-proof tablet..
Yes, the excellent "feature" of being able to force a Sun box down to it's hardware prompt with a quick tap of the break key is really useful.
That is, until someone power cycles a terminal server pugged into half your boxes. Opps, time to go and fix them all.. *grin*
-- Use the source, Luke!
Uh, well, sort of. You're not telnetting; you're attached to the box as the console. If the box is booted, you're "in Solaris." If the box is halted, you're in the ROM console.
And since, on Sparcs, the output-to-Serial-A is handled by the ROM, it will work on S/Linux.
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
Yes they definitely do have support for linux; unfortunately (last I know) it was binary-only support.
Use of DOC or IDE Flashdisks is often discussed on the LRP (Linux Router Project) mailing list. have a look at http://www.linuxrouter.org/.
you have moved your mouse, please reboot to make this change take effect
I think some people might be getting a touch confused here, so I'll try and restate the need.
Basically with a Sun machine, you can attach a console to the back and watch the boot process, right from the point where the PROM detects no keyboard present and redirects the console to the serial line. It doesn't matter whether or not you have a video card present for the machine to boot.
On a PC, depending on the BIOS you can or can't get away without a keyboard being present. However none (with the exception of the one I'm going to mention) will let you boot without a video card present. If the card is there then that is what will be your console.
Now people were talking about using the SERIAL CONSOLE directive, or just running getty on the serial line, to redirect it and thats fine, provided the machine boots that far. With a Sun, if it fails to boot because of a problem with the hardware, or misconfiguration in the PROM (BIOS equivalent) you still have console access. On a PC you don't.
Now Phoenix have just brought out a new BIOS which will let you redirect the console to a serial line in the same way as a Sun does, i.e. you can get to the BIOS from the serial line, edit parameters and force a powercycle. This is an immensely cool idea. In the ISP I worked in (one of the largest in Europe) we used vast amounts of PC based UNIX machines (OpenBSD, NetBSD and FreeBSD) none of which we could do this with.
Check out http://www.phoenix.com/platform/ser verbios.html and scroll down to the bit about Serial Remote Console.
HTH HAND
Joe
--
Don't some Ethernet Cards let you boot up remotely? this would solve a lot of problems I think... get an ATX case that can turn itself off through software, then boot of the ethernet... no need for serial cables ether :)
---------------
Chad Okere
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I remember booting Win98 on a Dell box. Got this little gem:
DOS error: no keyboard detected.
Press any key to continue.
I find it useful to configure the mouse for shutdown and restart so an operator can have some control over the servers...at least to be able to cleanly shut the things off.
On our HP boxen at work we use the RemoteAssist cards to do this. The routers are configured to passthrough port connections to a serial port on the RA card allowing us to remotely take control of the boxes (from POST to GUI). GUI use requires PC/Anywhere and a compatible OS (Novell or NT I know, anyothers?)
You can also view some management statistics and reboot or power off the box remotely using the RA card.
To misquote Churchill, never has an operating system (FreeBSD) used by so many been administered by so few. - NetCraft
There are solutions like http://www.auroratech.com which allow you to control multiple devices (either 16 or 128) from a single console running serial cables out to all the headless machinery. They aren't the only ones out there. Also, I don't know that they would work on any Linux/xBSD or other free platforms. I do know they support Sun/Solaris and NT.
BTW, I don't work for them. I am currently preparing to eval one of their products. They were very willing to send a demo of the hardware and software. Also, they aren't cheap but aren't outrageous.
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
You can possibly use a telnet application on a Palm Pilot to access the machine through the serial port. I've seen something similar done with the Pilot.
---- "It is never too late to give up our prejudices." --Henry David Thoreau(1817-1862)
there are quite a few people in here who have it right when they mention that switching boxes et al cannot help you when you are 3000 miles away from the box that just crashed.
a console server does just that....serves up consoles for multiple boxes over LAN's and WAN's.
monitor and keyboard share boxes are fine when you have all of your boxes in the same room (and when you only have like 10 of them). but when you walk into our data center and see a hundreds of 6-foot-tall IBM and Sun boxes, you quickly realize that switch boxes are no longer an option.
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
I know some motherboards, (like mine SuperMicro P5MMA98) will beep and complain when they dont find a video card or a keyboard. When I set up my standalone server there were settings in the BIOS which allowed you to tell the motherboard to ignore such conditions.
As far as getting the console on the serial port, thats a kernel option. I am not sure about how to issue a hard reset via this method; I just used to telnet to the machine and issue a shutdown command .
"Put down the Java and nobody gets hurt." -Jesse Burst (in reference to Sun's court victory over Microsoft about Jav
Some of you may have seen us at the Linux Expo in Raleigh. My company has a hardware/software solution that provides what you need (and more).
http://www.ki.com
I have experience running aroung a hundred Beuwulf
machines with around two moniter/keyboard sets.
One simply boots one with the moniter, sets it
running and then moves the moniter/kb to the next
one. This is designed mostly for long times
between reboots, and it can get tedious with a
couple hundred machines, but it works. And you
don't need a switch.
Dan Noe http://resonator.physics.sunysb.edu/dan/
My old ISP had a nice little setup that would power cycle anything hooked up to it when it was called via telephone. We had it hooked up to our PBX system. It required a PIN #, obviously, to control it but it was very effective, especially for that POS WorldGroup on NT server they had it running on. Bleah!!! What I want is a way to interface that with my standard telephone or answering machine so I don't have to buy another phoneline to cycle the power of my computer at home. Very useful....
You can get special hardware to power cycle a number of boxes remotely. It works as you desribed for the Sun, but is more like a hub with many systems connected to it.
This is probably preferrable - it reduces the cord clutter and helps you centralize resources.
I've got an E-Smith server sitting in my Comm. closet at the house and I really just have to GUESS when it needs something. No kbd, mouse, screen... just a box.
What about serial communication via linux terminal (I forget what it's called) isn't that compileable into the kernel?
If you lika me like I lika you...
Just shipped a data logger out for 16 days of logging without a keyboard or monitor, the best solution I found was a Matrix Orbital LCD display which mounts as a panel on a 5 1/4" drive bay along with the LCDProc Daemon see:h tml
http://lcdproc.omnipotent.net/
A kit form of a VT-52 compatible 5 1/4" drive bay LCD display with 4 keys using a PIC16F84 is available at:
http://www.nukem.freeserve.co.uk/picstuff/vt52.
As for the keyboard I used a Vetra keyboard eliminator available at:
http://www.vetra.com/
they also have keyboard encoders.
As for shut down and hard reset I simply used the mgeups Daemon available from freshmeat, to shutdown simply yank the UPS cord from the wall, just about idiot proof.
At a former ISP job in Maine, we used the APC MasterSwitch to handle the remote power admin on our primary servers. The device acts as a normal UPS, but contains a simple web server allowing access to remotely power cycle any of it's 8(?) outlets.
Pros:
The device allows for quick and simple access, updates, and additions to the configuration. It boasts a serial port on the unit for local administration and diagnostics. In general, it's an overall quick fix and has a sleek interface.
Cons:
IIRC, the price tag on this device isn't exactly pretty ($699). Going this route requires (obviously) new hardware & some possible legwork, as I don't recall how friendly this unit is on the network. If you "forget" the root password, APC does have a tool to reset it, however, this can only be done at an APC location.
We found this solution more practical and flexable then phone units (ring once, ring twice, reboot).
Brandon Crafts
bcrafts@SyPahoAoM.com
This can be achieved easily. 2.2.x series kernels support putting the console on the serial port. In addition, if you read the man page on lilo.conf(5), there's an option you can add to /etc/lilo.conf to have lilo work over a serial port as well. The only thing you need to worry about is the BIOS - some BIOS's out there (particularly older ones) don't like when a keyboard or video card is missing from the system. It doesn't necessarily help to tell the BIOS not to check for the presense of the hardware, either - when I configured a 486's BIOS to not check for a keyboard, LILO refused to boot. Instead, setting the BIOS to ignore any errors and continue booting seemed to work.
Hope that helps you.
PinkFreud
I have a 486/33 -8Mb Ram Linux box that acts as a ip masquerader, ssh server, telnet, ftp that has no video card or keyboard most of the time. It is possible with the 2.2.x kernel to turn on serial consol only now. So I don't see why any special hardware is needed. A side note however, you might want to change the default inittab and runlevel so that is doesn't spawn getty/mgetty to consol.
---- aut viam inveniam aut faciam
Forgot to add, once you have this set up you need to compile in "console on serial port" support in your kernel (everyone else is telling you that. too. ;) and LILO supports talking to a serial port, as well.
It may be expensive, but this is the device you want. It allows remote telnet-to-serial control, plus power control (on/off/cycle), and you can also connect from any serial port to any other serial port... If your network's down, just dial up to the modem you connected. ;)
There are a couple of companies that provide these products; Westeren Telematic and Baytech.
This works best if you are using it to manage several computers, because there is a minimum of 8 serial ports.
I tried to submit this URL to slashdot, but
no one saw fit to post it:
www.realweasel.com
We have the same problem with powercyclling compaq boxes
remotely.
Now we have bought APCC boxes which you can telnet into and power cycle the offending machine.
see www.apcc.com - price I dunno but probably expensive.
"Master switch power network controller"
on some machines you need to set a jumper inside for them to come up again as power is applied.
We haven't installed them yet so I dunno if they work as advertised.
If you are so unlucky as to have a motherboard that will not boot without a keyboard; check out your handy-dandy Black Box catalog. I don't have a catalog with me right now, but I know they sell a device for about $50 (like Black Box ever sold anything cheap!) that plugs into your keyboard port and fools your machine into "thinking" it has one attached.
~Any apparent grammatical or typographic errors are caused by defects in your display device.
I just bought one, and since I want to run my monitor at 1600x1200@75Hz from a couple of the machines, I put some effort into checking video performance. I ended up buying a 4-port Dakota Scout for $229 plus $40 per cable set for 10' hi-res cables.
The switch is manufactured by Cybex for Dakota, which sells them in the US and Europe. According the rep I spoke to, the box is a higher end version of the SwitchView, manufactured exclusively for Dakota.
I'm going to hook it up after I finish reading slashdot. Email me if you're interested in how well it works.
On Sparc, Ulra, and E-series Sun boxes you can telnet into the console(serial A). When you log into the console you are not in Solaris, you are dealing strictly with the EPROM which has several OS like features but it is HARWARE. I wonder if you could boot/halt a Linux machine running on a sparc?
Here at work (HP) we hook the serial ports of our server boxes onto a Lantronix box. One ETS16 can have up to 16 serial ports connected to it.
The beauty is the Lantronix allows you Ethernet access to it: you can telnet to the Lantronix and connect to the console on any machine. Moreover, it supports multiple uesrs logged on, and has a reasonable command line interface.
Use the "Console on serial port" kernel compile option and rebuild your kernel. 2.2.x kernels support this.
We use them to do remote kernel debugging from home, or to do alternate boot paths during system bring-up.
See http://www.lantronix.com
Mark.
mcrosbie@best.com
The Intel N440BX Server Motherboard has what they refer to as an EMP (Emergency Management Port).
e rver/n440bx/
More info:
http://developer.intel.com/support/motherboards/s
We have four e-machines at Exodus running Linux. Three are Red Hat 5.2 and one is Red Hat 6.0 with stock kernels. All are headless with continue on error configured in the bios. All have serial console enabled. If we need to get into a machine on the rack we just attach to the serial port with a null modem cable and hook it to a laptop and use a terminal program to login to the machine. I haven't had to do a hard reset though; if we need to reboot for whatever reason we just telnet in.
I haven't read the whole thread but here's a link to a fully configurable LCD terminal for linIx.
LCDproc is a small program that extracts various statistics about your
machine and displays them on an LCD display. It currently only
supports 20x4 character displays, made by Matrix Orbital Corporation
(a bunch of really cool people). Hit their web site at
http://www.matrix-orbital.com/ for pricing and ordering
information. We'll be supporting more displays in future versions.
http://lcdproc.omnipotent.net/
Surgeon, ze nezherlandz
(No prescription needed)
xcuze me for the double post
[ No prescription needed ]
I haven't read the whole thread but here's a link to a fully configurable LCD terminal for linIx.
LCDproc is a small program that extracts various statistics about your
machine and displays them on an LCD display. It currently only
supports 20x4 character displays, made by Matrix Orbital Corporation
(a bunch of really cool people). Hit their web site at
http://www.matrix-orbital.com/ for pricing and ordering
information. We'll be supporting more displays in future versions.
http://lcdproc.omnipotent.net/
Surgeon, ze nezherlandz
(No prescription needed)
[ No prescription needed ]
I bought a single board computer from Siliconrax (www.siliconrax.com) with 12MB DiskOnChip (DOC). I am planning on hooking up a 1.44 MB diskette, keyboard and monitor to load Linux onto the DOC. Then I will disconnect the diskette, monitor and keyboard and let it reboot from the DOC. I will have Ethernet cards so I can upgrade the OS from the LAN. Course, if I mess up then I will have to reattach the peripherals.
I also considered using a keyboard/video/mouse switch so I can share those components among multiple CPUs (in my PCI segmented passive backplane) but the KWN switches are spendy. Also, I haven't seen a diskette drive switch so, if I goof, I will have to open the case anyway.
Well I don't know the specifics of how you are going to be using it.. but basically there are a few things u could do. a) in the BIOS, there is usually something called "HALT ON ??? ERRORS" change this to NONE.. there may be something separate called "Keyboard check" which should be disabled. When this is done.. 2.2 allows console on serial port. If you are doing this through a local serial cable, then just run an unused set of pins to the reset pins on your motherboard and install a reset button to it. If this is to be done remotely (ie via modem).. you could probably find someone to create a box which will buffer the serial ports input and on a sequence of characters, short 2 pins (reset pins on mboard), and the rest will flow through to the serial port.
As for having the bios run over the serial port, I've seen some Digital DEC PC's with bios options that will run in "server mode" which will send all text through COM1..