Personal Co-location Registry

Krzysztof Adamski k at adamski.org
Fri Mar 19 22:42:25 UTC 2004


On Thu, 18 Mar 2004, Joel Jaeggli wrote:

>
> On Thu, 18 Mar 2004, Kelly Setzer wrote:
>
> >
> > On Thu, Mar 18, 2004 at 09:07:31AM -0500, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> > >
> > > In message <g3d67ag03k.fsf at sa.vix.com>, Paul Vixie writes:
> > >
> > > >> I agree, lack of interactive access to a system prior to a functional OS
> > > >> being loaded always seemed like a potential problem area to me,
> > > >> particularly for something based on common PC architecture.
> > > >
> > > >http://www.realweasel.com/ is your friend.  (isc has about a dozen of 'em.)
> > > >
> > >
> > > Realweasel is a great idea if you can afford it -- but the PCI version
> > > lists for $350, which is as expensive as some used 1U servers on EBay.
> >
> > Is there an effective alternative?  All the intel "servers" these days
> > seem to have one of those handy-dandy (note: sarcasm) ethernet ports
> > variously called "integrated lights-out (ILO)" or "lights-out
> > management (LOM)", etc.
> >
> > I am dismayed that intel-based server vendors haven't noticed the
> > decades-old trend of having serial ports for emergency/remote access.
>
> serial ports work fine for pc consoles in general, once your bootloader
> takes over you can display pretty much everything over there... some
> vendors provide options to map the bios display on the serial ports
> (supermicro) it's doesn't work for the bioses of some raid controllers
> however, a pc-weasel will handle that condition fine,and the pc-weasel can
> also do a hardware re-set of the whole machine to restart a hung box...
> They don't work so well if you only have one pci slot which you need for a
> raid controller or if as I found out recently someone reconfigures the
> terminal server and inadvertantly locks you out when you need it most.

The pc-weasel does not work in all motherboards also.

K




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