Tony Cowderoy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Does anyone know an inexpensive way of setting up IP-based remote > console access? I would like to set up keyboard/video access to a > remote machine, that will let me can access it at BIOS/boot loader level > from home (i.e. before the operating system loads). IP-based KVM > switches seem to start at around £500, which is a lot more than I want > to spend. Anyone got any useful ideas?
I've read this thread with interest. I couldn't see another way, so we (Turo) equipped one of our London co-lo racks with a KVM IP extender (startech) that we offer for customer use at a fairly low per-month fee. It can be accessed with VNC. Fairly expensive, but not prohibitively so if shared between enough machines. A serial console will get you a lot of the way, but it is possible to screw up a serial console during a kernel update, whereas I've not yet managed to screw the BIOS with a kernel. (Tempting fate!) Maybe there are enough people interested in this that it may be possible to develop some sort of keyboard-based remote control for when you have two PCs hosted together. Without that, some remote admin tricks can help a lot. Three of my favourites OTTOMH are: 1. one-time kernel boots then fallback to a known-good image, 2. reboot-on-panic settings, 3. scheduling a time-delayed reset attempt and a reboot before messing with the network configuration. How about other sysadmins here? Regards, -- MJ Ray - personal email, see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Work: http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ irc.oftc.net/slef Jabber/SIP ask _______________________________________________ Peterboro mailing list [email protected] https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/peterboro
