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Ask Slashdot: Hardware for Headless Linux Boxes

Posted by Cliff on from the we-don-need-no-steenking-keyboards! dept.

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?"

2 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Re:was that an ADB port? -- definitive answer. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4

    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.

  2. PCWeasel 2000 by David+Huggins-Daines · · Score: 4

    Sounds like you want one of these. They're not on the market yet, though, but they look super-cool.