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@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.
Kelly
-- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joel Jaeggli Unix Consulting joelja@darkwing.uoregon.edu GPG Key Fingerprint: 5C6E 0104 BAF0 40B0 5BD3 C38B F000 35AB B67F 56B2