Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Long standing problem of booting thu kvm switch
On 17/12/2010, at 5:58pm, Harry Putnam wrote: ... ps - You were bragging about the abilities of you KVM switch in the past thread... I didn't see it mentioned what switch that is. Also you mentioned accessing your KVM with a web browser... can you enlarge a few details on that? Let me start by saying that I looked up your KVM and was really impressed by it. Yours is the Iogear, right? Not Iomega, I think. I was really impressed that yours is all current technology, switching DVI port as well as mic speakers, that it uses USB keyboard mouse. My current model is a Blackbox KV9408A, back then I was still using my Austin Hughes IP-802. Basically, both are 8-port KVM switches with a framegrabber and some embedded Linux built on the same board. So the switch part allows you to manage multiple servers, and the framegrabber part allows this to be viewed across the network using a VNC client. I don't KVM at my desktop, I only use my main desktop machine there. The KVM-IP resides in the server closet, and can switch between my otherwise-headless machines there. It works really well for me, because a lot of my work is (or has been, at least) working on Windows PCs for small offices and home users. So if I bring in one of their PCs to recover data off it, run chkdisk or reinstall Windows, I just shove it in the closet and connect remotely. I don't have to cross the room or twist around in my seat to view the machine I'm working on, it just appears as a large window on the screen of one of the monitors of my desktop PC. I think this is *really* cool technology. There's something about it that appeals to me that I rate it on the same level of killer app as email and ssh. I practically fetishise it. These IP-KVMs cost c £1000 new, but you can pick them up on eBay for a song. I paid £100 for the Blackbox and I think c £120 for the Austin Hughes. The Blackbox is a little newer, I think, and initially more impressive to use, but overall the features of the two are about even. The web-interface of the Austin H looks a little dated now (it's a 2003 model), but it has the nifty programmable GUI buttons which I mentioned in the previous thread - with them you can create single-button shortcuts for any keyboard macro, and it also has a full on-screen keyboard for occasional use. I find the lack of that a real shortcoming in the Blackbox - this week I was unable to change some BIOS settings remotely because my MacBook's keyboard has no page-up / page-down keys. However the Blackbox just wins the comparison by a nose because it allows you to use any standard VNC client to view the servers - the Austin H requires you to use a browser-launched Java viewer. I could spend hours writing a comparison between the two products, because clearly I'm a fanboi for this technology. The two models do the same job, but it's interesting to observe that they have a bunch of implementation differences, and these have a range of more or less subtle benefits and annoyances. The market for these devices is fairly niche, I guess - it's impossible to find reviews of them before buying, and hard to learn anything at all about specific models, beyond manufacturers' brochures. A manual doesn't really give you much of an impression of how it is to actually use a particular KVM-IP. I imagine these are sold primarily to datacentres and the enterprise, companies who are buying 10 or 100 at a time, that they are serenaded by salesmen, and that the admins get to try a demo model, perhaps several, before buying them. I wouldn't be surprised if Alan has a few KVM-IPs, or can access his London / Paris / New York / Tokyo servers using them; I would be *extremely* interested to know what models he uses and what he thinks of them. The retail price is certainly prohibitive unless you've got a pressing business need for a KVM-IP, but as an enthusiast I can easily justify them secondhand. For me, bringing customer's PCs home to work on, they have been *so* useful. I continue to watch eBay for new listings - the only way to compare a new unit with my current one is to try it, and I don't think I'll lose anything on the deal if I manage to snipe an auction and then have a little patience in selling the unwanted unit locally or as a buy-it-now listing. Dell servers feature a similar technology which they call DRAC, which is a single embedded card per-server and which is not cheap. But it additionally allows you to power the server on and off and also to mount a .iso image in a virtual CD-ROM device across the network. So you can reconfigure the BIOS and hardware RAID array, then boot the server from this virtual CD drive and reinstall the o/s across the internet without any need for anyone to physically touch the machine. If the installation - or a kernel upgrade or anything else - goes wrong then you can intervene remotely and boot from a system rescue CD or whatever. I've used DRAC4 (early
[gentoo-user] Re: Long standing problem of booting thu kvm switch
Stroller strol...@stellar.eclipse.co.uk writes: On 17/12/2010, at 1:41am, Harry Putnam wrote: Somewhere back down the road... mnths now, I lost the ability to talk to the boot screen from my KVM connected keyboard. What I mean is, when gentoo starts to boot and reaches the grub screen... It does not see my keyboard yet. Once booted and login prompt is up (I boot to console mode) the keyboard now is recognized. There was a time when the keyboard was recognized throughout, so something changed in grub or I'm not sure what... but this happens before the kernel is booted. I'll refresh your memory: http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/gentoo/user/190909 There are unresolved posts in that thread - you haven't returned to the list and said yeah, I tried this and the result was . Please post back when you have checked the BIOS settings for HID devices. Thanks for the memory boost, you are a very patient fellow... I appreciate it greatly on this end. I can access the bios with no problem. And in So doing, and after sorting thru the bios listings a while I found the `legacy' switch for usb that can be toggled... pointed out in your posts on that previous thread. However since I can access the bios thru the KVM switch, shouldn't that mean I should be also able to access the grub prompt? At any rate, even though I don't understand why it should help I tried enabling the legacy switch (It had been disabled). And I'll be dammed if it didn't fix my problem... Had I not lost track of that earlier thread. All the ingredients necessary to stop my suffering were available there. Both you and Mike K, gave me all the suggestions needed to get straightened out. Thanks to you both .. and now able to access the grub prompt thru my KVM. ps - You were bragging about the abilities of you KVM switch in the past thread... I didn't see it mentioned what switch that is. Also you mentioned accessing your KVM with a web browser... can you enlarge a few details on that?
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Long standing problem of booting thu kvm switch
On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 11:58 AM, Harry Putnam rea...@newsguy.com wrote: However since I can access the bios thru the KVM switch, shouldn't that mean I should be also able to access the grub prompt? I think that basically GRUB does not have USB HID drivers to know how to talk to your keyboard directly, so the Legacy/DOS/whatever mode in your BIOS makes the BIOS emulate a standard PS/2 keyboard from your USB keyboard. AFAIK. :)
[gentoo-user] Re: Long standing problem of booting thu kvm switch
Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com writes: On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 11:58 AM, Harry Putnam rea...@newsguy.com wrote: However since I can access the bios thru the KVM switch, shouldn't that mean I should be also able to access the grub prompt? I think that basically GRUB does not have USB HID drivers to know how to talk to your keyboard directly, so the Legacy/DOS/whatever mode in your BIOS makes the BIOS emulate a standard PS/2 keyboard from your USB keyboard. AFAIK. :) OK, and that jibes right in with the start of my troubles, now possibly over a yr when it started... I had been using a ps/2 kvm. I bet the switch to usb kvm was the beginning of the trouble. From what you said, I'm thinking the fact that the old KVM was ps/2 would mean that was how grub worked with it. Grub is a very ancient program ... though I recall when linux users relied on lilo. But it seems development on grub has stalled quite some time ago.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Long standing problem of booting thu kvm switch
Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 5:36 PM, Harry Putnam rea...@newsguy.com wrote: Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com writes: On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 11:58 AM, Harry Putnam rea...@newsguy.com wrote: However since I can access the bios thru the KVM switch, shouldn't that mean I should be also able to access the grub prompt? I think that basically GRUB does not have USB HID drivers to know how to talk to your keyboard directly, so the Legacy/DOS/whatever mode in your BIOS makes the BIOS emulate a standard PS/2 keyboard from your USB keyboard. AFAIK. :) OK, and that jibes right in with the start of my troubles, now possibly over a yr when it started... I had been using a ps/2 kvm. I bet the switch to usb kvm was the beginning of the trouble. From what you said, I'm thinking the fact that the old KVM was ps/2 would mean that was how grub worked with it. Grub is a very ancient program ... though I recall when linux users relied on lilo. But it seems development on grub has stalled quite some time ago. The development on the version of grub that most of us use (grub 0.xx series, now called grub-legacy) stopped something like 5 years ago so they could begin again on grub2. grub2 is still under active development and is usable but development status would still be classified as unstable and they could make major compatibility-defying changes at any time if they wanted to. There have been patches to the legacy grub to add support for things like GPT so it still gets the job done for most people in most ordinary cases. Here's a page that lists the current features of grub2: http://grub.enbug.org/CurrentStatus
[gentoo-user] Re: Long standing problem of booting thu kvm switch
Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com writes: There have been patches to the legacy grub to add support for things like GPT so it still gets the job done for most people in most ordinary cases. Here's a page that lists the current features of grub2: http://grub.enbug.org/CurrentStatus I'm not in need of anything more than the legacy either, Now that someone who spent the time to help me has lead me by the hand and put my nose directly into the information I needed (Thanks again Stoller) The fast skimming I did at that page and the home site seems to indicate its not really much different. Seems to be aimed at less common usages mainly.
