John Abreau wrote:
>
> Rodent of Unusual Size <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> > Rrr.. one of my servers is requiring intervention (read: rebooting)
> > on an almost daily basis now. This leads to two questions:
> >
> > 1. Is there any way to get access to the console through the
> > serial port? I have another system that does this for VMS
> > and T64U systems (anyone remember VCS?), but it's unclear
> > to me whether Linux supports it -- and, if so, how I can
> > set it up. I basically want to be able to give an irresistable
> > three finger salute through the serial port if need be, to
> > *force* a crash/reboot.
>
> If the system is hung, rebooting like this won't work. There's another
> option I found about a year ago: power strips you can telnet into and
> selectively toggle the power to the machine.
>
> A quick google search turned this up:
>
> http://www.dataprobe.com/power/iboot.html
>
FWIW,
We're currently experimenting with the PCI version of the PC Weasel
card(www.realweasel.com). We haven't had enough time to test it out
thouroughly, but it's seemed to perform pretty well so far. In addition
to providing an ANSI color serial console(BIOS settings from your color
xterm...) it's also got a cable you can use to jumper it to the reset
switch so that you can command it to toggle a hard reset, plus it also
keeps the last 256 POST codes in a buffer you can examine. It does
take over VGA functions, so if your motherboard has an on-board video
display, you have to be able to either manually disable it, or have the
BIOS automagically disable it. Also, it's somewhat pricy... you have
to really want it. We have a remotely accessible console management
system that has logging, so for us it was -very- much worth it(as opposed to
most KVM switches that have no logging capability at all).
--
Bob Kenney
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