Jarod Wilson wrote:
On Tuesday 15 April 2008 09:02:35 pm John Summerfield wrote:
Ahmed Kamal wrote:
Hi guys,
Situation
=======
I'm managing a server in some rural area with too many power cuts! Even
long power cuts that our ups can't handle, and sometimes flickery power
spikes, such that evidently sometimes the server reboots, and waits at
the stupid "check file system" prompts. I get to drive for an hour to fix
that FS corruption! Now, that machine does not have IPMI management or
similar, and the serial port is connected to the UPS for auto-shutdown.
Problem
=====
This leaves me with no "remote" way to fix serious errors such as FS
checking
Suggestion
=======
Is there such a thing as remote serial console. I'm thinking *if* the
kernel gets to boot, then it immediately starts the network interface,
and a tiny server for sending console messages to whoever is connected. I
should be able to fix FS corruption and other serious problems. My
question is, does such a thing exist ?
Something you might keep an eye out for in the future is USB-capable
UPSs.
Could also move the existing ups to a usb-to-serial adapter, which would allow
the on-board serial port to serve as a serial console output.
Doesn't help you in the least right now, but note that the idea has been
tossed around in Fedora kernel land about making basic usb-serial support
built into the kernel in rawhide post-Fedora 9 release, the primary reason
being so that one could do serial console output on a usb-serial adapter...
This is a bit related, so I'll bring it up here, and maybe again on
Fedora test.
I have a problem with 2.6.25 kernels on one of my systems, and so I've
been playing with ways to get stuff logged. The netconsole looks handy,
but I've not managed to get it to work.
I don't want to assign an IP address in the kernel commandline, so it
has to get one.
At present, it doesn't do this, so netconsole doesn't work.
Just for the hell of it, I added "ip=dhcp" as one does for nfs-root.
Then, netconsole failed. After that, the kernel used dhcp to get an IP
address.
Now, if the kernel could get the IP address first, then netconsole would
work and I'd be able to log this problem without fiddling around with
serial cables and other computers.
I could even, with appropriate firewall rules, log the messages directly
to JW's peecee!
It wouldn't help Ahmed, but one can imagine that it could be extended to
allow two way communication.
--
Cheers
John
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