Justin Cormack <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > What do people do when they get very large numbers of serial consoles? > > I was wondering if using etherboot-like network drivers (ie no dma) to run > the console would be any less reliable than a serial console?
Not especially. I have seen more network card failures than serial failures, but simple polled drivers should be o.k. Most network cards appear to require DMA to get the packet to the card so you probably can not use them before raminit. > As I am using > gigabit ethernet there is often a spare motherboard ethernet (as you > obvioously dont want to run the main ether like this), and it could be on > a dedicated network for security (especially if you feed udp packets into > the console). > It might take a little more setup than serial (ie you might not be able to > do it before RAM init) I guess, as you have to detect media, and do dhcp > (though you could run over raw ethernet in broadcast mode). Raw ethernet in multicast mode would be good. The primary limiter from using it during early ram initialization is simply that must network cards use DMA. > Is this sensible? As an idea definentily. Only putting it into practice would give a real answer.
