Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
News

Proper Serial Console Support 143

Posted by Nik from the NP:-backup-tapes-redux dept.
I snarfed this from Daily DaemonNews, and it's very cool. If you administer a bunch of PC Unix servers (BSD, Linux, whatever) you probably miss the serial console that proper servers have. Once the OS is booting you can get serial output, but that doesn't help for modifying the BIOS. For that you need a monitor and keyboard. Enter the PC Weasel, an ISA board that pretends to be an MDA card, but actually stuffs the display out a serial port, and takes keyboard input and plugs it in to the keyboard buffer. So no need for a monitor now, just a serial connection. Probably the best thing is that if you buy one, you automatically get a source license for the microcontroller code, so you can customise it all you want.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Proper Serial Console Support More

Proper Serial Console Support

Comments Filter:

  • No watchdog timer? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    HP has something like this built-in on some of their NetServer line (and optional on others) which provides "Remote Assist." In addition, it does auto-paging for failure conditions and for NT or Netware the failure conditions include the ability to do ASR (Auto-Server Restart). ASR is pritty much the same sort of thing as the watchdog timer support that Linux already has. Unfortantly, while HP is claiming to support Linux, they still do not provide any assistance with getting ASR working with Linux. It would be nice if Weasel filled in all the gabs that HP's RA/ASR leaves and accomplished a hardware watchdog timer service in addition to remote console.

  • Re:Actually, PCI *is* Needed! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I agree a PCI version is needed. When we first dreamt these things up, I wanted ISA because I didn't want to waste PCI slots with a stupid console board. I wanted to save PCI slots for scsi controllers, ethernet, etc.. A PCI version is in the queue. no details yet on when. btw, part of putting serial in the bios is that the bios doesn't detect direct screen writes as some cards use. Also, afaict, the only way you can remotely reset an Intel board with the serial bios is using their Windows client software on a directly connected serial port or dialup modem. I want neither on my servers 8000 miles away. I want to ssh to a console server and get at my consoles. Or in the case of network outage, I want the option of dialing in to _1_ phone line to get to my 20 servers. I don't want to rent 20 phone lines. I also want to press the reset button, not rely on some bios on a machine that could be wedged. The Weasel lets you press the reset button (and hold it in too if you don't want the machine to boot back up).. I also want a watchdog timer so when my OS stops paying attention, I can have the machine be reset.

  • you tell that bad mammajamma! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I guess it must suck to work for you.

    LOL!! He must be one of those Satanist Canadians. Observe the Canadian lifestyle in the rewrite of Oscar-nominated song from South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut:

    "Blame Canada" Lyrical Rewrite
    by Trey Parker

    Canada is full of faggots,
    Greasy hair that's full of maggots,
    Gay little boys and girls just whackin'
    off while men go lumberjackin'!
    Go fuck your mom because she's loose,
    Or maybe make love to a moose!
    Blame Canada, Blame Canada,
    Not even a real country anyway.

    Thank you.

    Note: This post has been moderated down by Satanist Canadian moderators in other discussions. Please, Satanist Canadians: return to your homes and commence making love to bottles of maple syrup.

    - Jesus Christ
    (#154953, account temporarily disabled for being moderated down)

    I am the Lord.
    God Hates Moderators.

  • Re:My thoughts (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    However, this behaviour can be quite annoying, because the break signal occurs also when you power off the serial terminal. We have a Sun E5k here connected to the Linux console server with Cyclades serial board, and it falls into the PROM monitor prompt when we power off the console server. As mentioned by others, this is an old problem. Someone else mentioned a patch which allows use of an alternate break sequence, " ~ ^b" which sounds cumbersome... a more direct solution is to get a console adapter that blocks break signals caused by the power off of the terminal server. I have something called a "NUDATA 4273" which just fits on the serial port and does just that. Note that all breaks are not blocked, just the ones caused by the voltage drop of powering off the terminal server.

  • openbios ? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I agree with the previous post that it seemed like a lot of hw.

    Serial console support is on the wishlist (URL:http://www.freiburg.linux.de/openbios/wishlis t/) of openbios.

    Do your part!

  • Well, you did say workstation, but since this thread is about servers, I'll make a polite correction. The new servers from HP (N-class for example) have several console options built in, including a telnet console. You can telnet in directly to the service processor and manipulate the box as if you had a hardwired serial console. It is password protected for access to the service processor. To access the OS once the system is running, you also have to log in to a valid user account. This may be a little offtopic, but there is at least one vendor (and probably others) doing network consoles.
  • I agree i would love this in PCI, this kicks ass even though it is ISA. But the big question where can i buy one ?

    BTW no unix workstation that has a console port has been networkable. you dont want it to be. Networking introduces alot of security issues that the colsole manufacturer doesnt need to deel with.
  • I guess it must suck to work for you.

    Not if you behave responsibly, no. Simon has the BOFH nature in spades, which is a good thing.

    Of course, if, as you now admit, this box was nobody's responsibility, then I would conclude that it must suck to work for your employer since they seem to be incapable of administering their network effectively.

  • Errr - I think you're missing the point. This card is for _out of band_ access. So, even if you whole machine is non-booting you can still go in and play with the bios from remote.

    Of course you don't want a sea of serial cabling, so use a console server that acts as a gateway between TCP/IP traffic and serial connections.

    These things only cost about $100/ port, and are prettymuch vital for anyone running a machine room or server farm.

  • Why would anyone in their right mind make a new design based on the ISA bus ?

    Because there are a few motherboards out there which don't support PCI in the back-up BIOS.

    I used to have one. A Tyan Titan III (S1468 I think). It was a standard Pentium mobo, with mixed PCI/ISA. The BIOS was stored on EEPROM and you could flash a new bios onto the board if you wanted. Lots of motherboards support that. But, there was also a back-up BIOS in real ROM, unflashable. If the flashed bios failed a checksum, then it booted with a very tiny backup bios. Because the backup bios was so small, support for the PCI bus was not included. The only function for this bios was to be able to boot off a floppy and flash a new real bios.

    So, one day, something happened to my machine, and the bios got hosed. Checksum error. But, with my fancy PCI graphics card, I couldn't see anything. I had to get an old ISA card and swap it in temporarily while I flashed a new bios.

    As long as your mobo has an ISA slot on it, then ISA is the way to go for something like this. It's far simpler to support, and, when things start going wrong with a system, the ISA bus will be more dependable than the PCI bus.

    However, high end boards are now shipping PCI only, so, they really should have two versions of the card. That would be the best solution.
  • While I can envision some cases where having serial IO would be valuable so early in the boot process, the fact is that monitors and keyboards are now so cheap, abundant, and portable as to render serial IO archaic.

    Pshaw!

    I'm currently in Japan, but relying on my server in New York to keep running. If something goes seriously wrong with it, a card like this would be a lifesaver.

    I could keep an emergency install CD in the CDROM drive, but keep the boot device as the hard disk. From half the world away I could completely reinstall the OS if I needed to!

    There's nothing archaic about that!
  • Cool, but some systems, like Alphas [alphalinux.org], have had this since they were created. It is very handy for headless systems too! Besides that you could always put that terminal you always wanted in the bedroom so you can code, code, code! I want a terminal in the bathroom, kitchen, and especially the living room. That way I can code during comercials without missing the start of a show or keep up on the latest mail with mutt or pine. (mutt rules all mailers BTW)
  • X terminal? Think "remote server" here. You know, server miles away, console plugged into a terminal server so you can reboot it from where ever?

    Nobody in their right mind runs X on a server, and it certainly isn't going to do you any good trying to figure out why the remote machine won't boot.

    Next time, try reading the linked article.

  • oh god.. you havn't a clue have you?

    the point is that this gives you complete remote access to your machine.. you have a rack of servers, you put a terminal server in and the wire all the machines into it, then you can remote boot your pc servers by telneting or dialling into the term server.

    CPQ has had this for a while now (Insight something). It used to be a card (with a 386 on it), but now it's integrated in most new proliant servers, you just enable it in Compaq's config utility.
  • This Is Pretty Old But Anyway... i know the realweasel card for almost one year! and it's a canadian product :o)
    --
    BeDevId 15453
    Download BeOS R5 PE [be.com] free!
  • With his level of competence, he would be hired again making more money before tea-time was over. You would probably be begging on your knees to have him work for you again within a week.

    As for the people who think he is lying about the NT admin seeing the server in its improved state: There are many possible situtations where the old NT admin may come back to the job site months after leaving the job.

    For example, they may have needed him on a consultancy basis because some other NT box on the netowrk took a shit.

    - Sam

  • Actually, their servers run on NetBSD. The Real Weasel itself will run with any OS since it is OS independent.
  • "The PC Weasel distinguishes itself even further by being an open-source product."
    In that case, anyone know where I can download the schematic and parts list so that I can roll my own?
  • Here's another way, but requires the assistance of some kernel hackers.

    On my old Sun Sparc 2s, when you pull the video board, they run to the serial port. No magic hardware. A quick poll during initialization and if there's no video then swap out the console write and keyboard read routines and/or pointers.

    BREAK was also used on HP3000s back when I used to run some of them. They may still work that way.

    I run a couple of headless machines. Whenever they need some reconfiguration or troubleshooting, I have to lug them back to a nearby monitor. Some other people I know run their serial ports into terminal servers so that they can telnet to the console ports of multiple machines even when the machine itself won't respond to a telnet.

    Headless operation doesn't seem to be very hard to add to the boot process, and it would help out a lot of us who operate machines in that mode.

    - jeff -
  • Ironicly, the Real Weasel only supports some Award and Phoenix BIOSes, no AMI for the moment.

    They are working on a PCI version, however.
  • This card looks cool but it's ISA. How about a PCI version?
  • In the last year or two, every Intel-based server that I've dealt with has been PCI-only. The ISA bus is dead (long live ISA!). More and more PC clone manufacturers are abandoning it in their new desktop systems.

    Even better than a card-based solution would be a BIOS-based solution, IMHO. If Intel is serious about making motherboards for "servers", they better get with it and go with a serial console.
  • If this [slashdot.org] or this [slashdot.org] is what you're talking about, then they are different things. However, PCWeasel 2000 was mentioned in the comments for one of the posts. Also, the second link is a good place to look before you decide to buy this thing.

    --

  • Or so I've been lead to believe.

    We just recieved a boatload of Fullon's and VA sells a system called the VA Cluster Management System (I've also heard it referred to as "The Mayor", although that is just a software component). I have not read up on it too much (its one of those upgrades we'll probably never get to see).

    More info about it is here. Its actually a bit different (and much more expensive), but seems to have similar functionality.
  • but which protocol over Ethernet? You want an entire TCP/IP stack on the card too?
  • This should be a great advantage to large server farms when configuring them, now can just have a serial connection to each of them and setup the bios and such that way, should be much faster than having a videocard in each case.
  • So you lied about the admin?

    Oh dear. You must be very sad.

    S.
  • I'll reiterated what a couple of people have already said. Remote administration would be difficult using a KVM would it not?

    However, I will agree with others also and state that this feature really belongs in the BIOS the way its done by Sun.

  • However, even serial console support isn't perfect. After all, how do you send the three-finger salute over a serial line?

    I think Sun uses the serial line break to get you to the PROM monitor (the "ok"-prompt). I think we can use the same for ctrl-alt-del or SysRQ.

    However, this behaviour can be quite annoying, because the break signal occurs also when you power off the serial terminal. We have a Sun E5k here connected to the Linux console server with Cyclades serial board, and it falls into the PROM monitor prompt when we power off the console server.


    --

  • A co-worker of mine called the company and inquired about the cost. The rep said they were at around $250 US right now, but they were working on a new version with less chipcount that would be cheaper. Also, they've got T-shirts with their cool logo designed (the white parts of the logo glow in the dark), but no pricing is available on those yet. :P

  • This is a brain dead bus, without interrupt sharing and severe limitations on DMA and IO.

    You're right, the machine will take 56.001 seconds to boot instead of 56.0 seconds, and you'll only be able to hook up a 115200 baud terminal instead of a 230400 baud terminal. Yep, they obviously should have made it a 4x AGP card instead of using that ISA crap.


    ---
  • Had some links ready soo..

    Serial to NTSC [slashdot.org]

    PIC and PAL [efd.lth.se] equals Tetris. This could be used in a serial->PAL thingy..

    PIC->LCD [phanderson.com] pretty ok (BASIC STAMP),if you just need the display, has been hacked to accept ps/2 input (no links)

    I just know this has been done before, maybe by the same guys but back then it wasn't a commercial site so I can't say really.

  • PCI only, right ...

    The board seems to be nice, but two versions of the board are not sufficient if the guys want to support all relevant architectures.

    It is my feeling that Compact PCI should be mentioned here as well. Without cPCI version, I am not interested.

    happy hacking
  • Does anyone know of a device that will take serial line input, and generate keyboard output (meaning physically output on a PS/2 type connector). We have an important hardware card w/ crappy proprietary MSDOS software, that expects keyboard input only (seems to read the keyboard buffer directly).

    We would like to automate many things, but there is no easy way to do it (that we've found). TSR's that copy serial to keyboard don't seem to work well (they don't allow ALT-Key combos, which we need to control the app). Running under DOSEMU doesn't work because the hardware uses DMA. Bar code readers also don't provide Meta keys (at least, not the ones we need).

    A simple box that plugs into the keyboard port, and parses serial input into key strokes, would be ideal.

    Thanks in advance.
  • Yes it does.

    I was on the beta program and it rocks.
  • The "Related Links" are taken directly from the story as posted. Any search URL is built using each of the links in the story, and placed under "Related Links." It doesn't matter what the story is about.

    Given this...you are correct. There's no "Linux" link whose HREF is www.linux.com.

    Broken code, or conspiracy? :)

  • I would say just send raw ethernet packets, that way the device doesn't have to configure an IP address. If each device has a MAC then you can have mutiple machines on a LAN without conflicts.
    Without a protocol some packets may be losted, but the work of resolving these can be done on the client without much work.

    The only issue I see is security. If the machine will always take input from the lan AND one of the inputs is "CTRL-ALT-DEL" which is mapped to reboot, then you could have problems if someone broke into your subnet. :) I'm fine with letting the firewall take care of that issue and passing on the encryption.


  • Hmm cheap hardware, more rubbish in land fills.

    Also have lots of perhperal on standbye is a sure way of chewing more power that it note required. A CRT on standbye can still use a substantial amount of power because the transformer cannot handle such low loads.
  • Sharing IRQ's between PCI and ISA does not work, which implies that your SCSI controller might be forced to share an interrupt or dma channel with one of the the ethernet controllers if you have a ISA card in your system. If the card had been a PCI card it could share the IRQ with the SCSI controller for the backup streamer, which would have minor impact on the system performance.

    In a PC, every important card (scsi, ethernet, etc.) should have its own unshared interrupt. Adding ISA cards for low bandwidth purposes, eats interrupts from the high bandwidth tasks.

    Parity shouldn't be an issue, since a bus isn't supposed to fail. The mechanism exists to isolate errors, since debugging hardware incompatibility is very difficult.

    The industry chooses lower supply voltages on electronics simply because it delivers better price/performance ratio, but this does not apply it you have to add a switch mode power supply to your ISA card to create the +3.3 V from +5V.

    So in short: Why would anyone in their right mind make a new design based on the ISA bus ?

    Green engineers ?

  • it would not be difficult at all to write a program such as this as say, a Linux/BSD/whatever daemon

    It already exists -- it's called the telnet daemon. Just telnet in, su to root, and reboot.

    The problem is, of course, that many times the reason you want to reboot is because the machine is hung, and daemons are not responding. Something outside the normal system is required.

    -y

  • This is now the third time that the realweasel has appeared on slashdot. Don't you guys check anything before posting?

    WRT the card itself, it is hard to justify $200 for this card when you can purchase a brand new Intel motherboard with EMP for $150. If you've got big bucks invested in a server it might be helpful, but do you really want to be plugging in any ISA cards to such a machine?

  • So, for limited size operations, four to eight machines, give or take, wouldn't a monitor/keyboard switchbox be the way to go? They 're really not that expensive of an option. There are currently on the market boxes which support all types of keyboard and video connection. Everything from PS/2 and Mac's old ADB to USB...Granted, this doesn't give all of the utility of the PC Weasel, it *is* a less expensive way to save space, power etc. in a server room.

    Moreover, such solutions allow different platforms (ie Mac, Sun, and Linux Boxes) to be run through the same monitor and or keyboard. This isn't a huge selling point right now... But it may well become one, depending on how the whole Apple Darwin/OS X/OS X Server progression takes off, not to mention Linux PPC, which is an impressive port of Linux to the PPC architecture.

    So, there are viable options to run linux boxes all but headless while still keeping them readily accessable to a monitor/keyboard connection.


  • This device is really cool ... but what is it's price?
    I didn't see it on their site!
  • Re:Not the way to go in a datacenter (Score:1) by Incongruity (tcp{AT}mac{DOT}com) on 2 342602 PST (#68) (User Info) So, for limited size operations, four to eight machines, give or take, wouldn't a monitor/keyboard switchbox be the way to go? They 're really not that expensive of an option. There are currently on the market boxes which support all types of keyboard and video connection. Everything from PS/2 and Mac's old ADB to USB

    Not to say that all of these things don't measure up, but I've had the displeasure of using a few of them that failed in some manner or other. Sometimes it's a matter of the system not being able to detect a keyboard/mouse at boot-up if the switch box isnt turned to that machine. Sometimes it's a shock sent down the bus that kills the system. And even the cheap ones tend to run in the low 3-digit range for a 2 system box.

  • they are very funky things. they are basically a 486 on a card, iirc has the modem as you mentioned, network access and a web server for stats. that & the battery backups on the scsi card cache amazed me for ages when i first saw them.
    heres a link about them [compaq.com] [the insight boards]
  • No, this is a very good thing for at home too (well, for me it is).

    When I bought a new computer, I refused everything I did not need (Windows, internal modem and yes... monitor). My old 486 now runs with a terminal, no monitor, no keyboard. I use my old monitor for my new Celeron, but sometimes I need to boot the old 486, this device is very nice, I have lot's of BIOS related problems on my 486, spares indeed the time of rewireing the old monitor.

  • Why not hook the serial port into a terminal server port? Then *log into it* like everyone else does.
    That would make more sense than telnetting in, which would imply that you have some thing more than a booting system.
  • Compaq offers an "Insight managment board" which does kinda the same thing. It goes into compaq servers, and allows you to access your server via modem, even when the thing is off. Too bad it sets you back about $800
  • It cost $250 plus shipping, etc.

    It is ISA because it emulates an IBM MDA video card, which was ...wait.for.it... ISA-based!

    Yes, you can send the three-finger-salute, control-tilde to get command mode, then 'x' for, hell, i dunno, some canadian word I guess, then 'c-a-del'. Similarly you can send all the other keys which don't exist in ASCII.

    This thing rocks. And yes, we have > 100 servers in our datacenter connected by serial consoles (via lat terminal servers to ethernet to our console server machine).

    The only problem preventing us from buying a bunch of these is while it works perfectly in my $499 personal eMachine, I can't get the fscking Dell servers to deal with it!!!

  • While I can envision some cases where having serial IO would be valuable so early in the boot process, the fact is that monitors and keyboards are now so cheap, abundant, and portable as to render serial IO archaic. This is particularly true because one can use the serial ports for IO once your *nix is booted!

    And for the random cases where your BIOS has been scrambled by interplanetary nuclear forces, grab the monitor off the desk...6 feet away (!).

    I'm sorry, but the old way does not make it the right way! Use the cheap-hardware trend...there's essentially no reason today for anything but a monitor (and most of us use ethernet once the system is booted, anyway :)

    -nullity-

    I am nothing.
  • Apologies. I clearly misunderstood the abilities of the card. I didn't understand it had abilities even before the computer was powered. I concede entirely.

    -nullity-

    I really am nothing. :)

  • ...always been one of my major complaints. I have been able to run linux without a video card offsite, but it's not much help. This could be really helpful and if I ever need to run a headless server I'll snap it up faster than... well... we needn't go into that.

    That being said, the serial console extentions to linux are really useful.


    If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
  • what I'd really like is a little PCI card which took in a 10 baseT ethernet jack and had a little processor on it, enough to do DHCP to get an address, and run a telnet connection in lieu of the serial connection detailed here, maybe some other functionality would be handy if you've already got that much in place, but it shouldn't cost much. a 68EN360 should be able to serve as both processor and ethernet controller. Should be cheap enough to implement. It would be even more useful if it ran on a separate power channel from the power supply so that it could actually reboot the system in question. It could show up as an MDA to the system, queue up boot info. you might even get fancy and throw a little webserver on it with a VNC server or something.
  • Intel DOES have "server" boards with console ports. Check out the N440BX (the old rev. maxes out at p2-450). I don't have URL available as MAE east is currently barfing.
  • What is the point of having these things when you can just use an X terminal? This is outdated technology in many ways; with an X terminal you can have multiple xterms (preferably dtterms) sitting on your screen at once, with cut and paste, etc. Why depend on this serial crap when you can have X over ethernet?
  • They left that off their page... Its also a lot of hardware for something so simple.
  • But there are going to be occasional cases where this is useful. Even if you don't want to do anything with the BIOS (I haven't since I installed my last motherboard) it could still be useful for remote admin without having to use a network, which would be useful for fixing network problems, or even for using MS-DOS remotely.

    Still, definitely a product with a very small niche.
  • what if the OS isn't booting?
  • I remember years ago using a MDA and VGA card in one machine, to run on VGA and debug on MDA (good old Turbo C).

    Anyway, AFAIR, ISA runs at the speed of the slowest device installed (MDA in this case!).

    Now I don't know if this still is true for PCI/AGP, but if you find your machine slowing down, it may be the old MDA card in your machine.

  • Really, as many others have pointed out, a big ISA card is really not an elegant way to achieve a relatively simple redirect. However, I have long dreamed of the day when I would be able to crack open my case and install something like a VNC "video" card... Think about it-- compatibility with any operating system, mad hardware acceleration with X (and, for mass-market appeal, DirectX)... Of course, we all say, why bother? Servers don't need graphics... Well, were this implemented efficiently and effectively, it could probably become quite a marketable product... Not only would this be of unspeakable utility for people managing pools of heterogeniety (some people HAVE to use NT), but it could become a cost effective method of console extension for musicians, visual artists, whatnot... There are plenty of people out there (myself included) who would REALLY LIKE to place their non-OS-specific console significantly further than six feet away from their non-OS-specific machines. Without losing video quality. However, the extension hardware currently existing to accomplish this is expensive as all hell. A server card in each machine, a standalone client box, and a switch. I mean, of course I've just completely avoided any practical design issues-- transport, security, whatnot-- but this would be quite doable, and mad wicked. Any hardware manufacturers listening out there?
  • >Second, look at that card! It's frigging huge! >It looks more like a FPGA prototype; I'm sure >the designers could have it converted to a >single chip ASIC and make the card 75% smaller.

    Given that the card has to be long enough to engage the ISA bus completely, and its length is therfore irreducible below that, all you'd be saving is height or width, neither of which gives any benefit when populating a PC. What advantage did you imagine the extra expense of custom engineering would bring?

  • If you worked for me and did that to a computer that wasn't your responsiblility, without seeking permission first, you'd be out in the street looking for another job by tea-time.
  • You've obviously never done kernel hacking while dialed up from home. My question -- can you make it reboot using the serial port...?
  • a handy terminal for pluggin' in to a rack mounted server or router etc... (RS232), no need to carry around monitor's

    It does 80x25 VT100, and has DB9 cable (get one of those DB9-DB25 adapter pieces as well for suns etc...)

    It fits in your back pocket.
  • Get a psion 3C or 3A with serial cable 80x25 VT100 fit's in your back pocket :)
  • DISCLAIMER: I'm a friend of the guys at canuck.com who're responsible for the weasel. We're (Largemedium, web shop) actually running 4 prototypes of the weasel with headless NetBSD host's out at our colo facility. They're all accessible via a modem and cisco serial console. Dial into the console, and telnet to the ip address of your choice. It's SWEET. If your responsible for a machine room with anything like traffic and, moreover, it's not in the same building, the weasel is a dream....
  • DISCLAIMER: I'm a friend of the guys at canuck.com who're responsible for the weasel. We're (Largemedium, web shop)actually running 4 prototypes of the weasel with headless NetBSD host's out at our colo facility. They're all accessible via a modem and cisco serial console. Dial into the console, and telnet to the ip address of your choice. It's SWEET. If your responsible for a machine room with anything like traffic and, moreover, it's not in the same building, the weasel is a dream.... As for the cost, witness later posts about a compaq specific product priced at $800 USD.
  • Yes, you can make it reboot. You can also break into the bios as the machine comes up and configure the bios. Perhaps configure a second scsi id to boot from ... It's that lovely.
  • No, I paid $250 USD for them. Not $ CAN :) Real men make love to meese. A Canuck.
  • ...if you have a quality KVM switch? I have the Blackbox switch and it's been perfect so far; pricey, I'll grant you, but anyone who's running multiple servers should have the dough to yak up for one of these, I'll reckon. Plus, this way I can switch between one box running GUI and others running plain old shells, right at the keyboard, just by hitting ctrl followed by the number of the box I want.

    BTW, this is a followup to the Ask Slashdot about KVM switches: disregard whatever it ways in there and just buy the Blackbox. A lot of people said the Linksys units were OK, but I had nothing but trouble. Replaced it with the Blackbox and it's all joy. Someone said the Blackbox is a re-badged Cybex (and we don't need no steenking badges), but I couldn't verify which one, so I just bought the Blackbox, and it's sweet.

  • What advantage did you imagine the extra expense of custom engineering would bring?

    Consider a rackmount situation where the card must fit in a very small case. Height makes a BIG difference there. In a 1U case, the card will be mounted horizontally, making the height matter even more.

  • And for the random cases where your BIOS has been scrambled by interplanetary nuclear forces, grab the monitor off the desk...6 feet away (!).

    Given my servers' location, it will take me no less than an hour (travel time) to grab a monitor off the desk and plug it in. Add to that that servers NEVER go down at nice convieniant times like Wednesday at 2:15 PM, it's always 3:00 AM Sunday morning during a thunderstorm when the car won't start (in 6 feet of snow, uphill both ways with the blazing sun burning down on you). It's much nicer to dial in to fix those problems. It also gets the system up faster or at least provides a clue as to what spare parts it will need.

  • In a datacenter environment, you don't want to go lugging a monitor around. Besides, if you don't know what's wrong with a machine, you don't go turning the thing off just so you can plug a keyboard into it! And yes you could have a keyboard attached to each machine but that gets a little annoying when you've got a few hundred or thousand machines.


    _damnit_
  • So, for limited size operations, four to eight machines, give or take, wouldn't a monitor/keyboard switchbox be the way to go?

    That might be cheeper. But won't a limited size operation have a limited number of people who can fix the problem? What if they are home sleeping? Or home sick? If all you have is the keybord/vid switch you either

    1. Wait until they drive into the office
    2. Force them to go through the extreamly low bandwidth lossy interfaces of "Ok what does it say now?" "Yeah, press the F1 key, that's the key with both F and one on it, not F then one!" "What did it do?" "No really" "Fuck"

    For a big operation, it may only be the diffrence between the on duty person running form their desk to the right machine room, finding the crash cart and draging it to the right spot vs typing "console machine-name". Call it five to ten minutes. A big operation can lose a lot of money with five to ten extra minutes of down time.

    Moreover, such solutions allow different platforms (ie Mac, Sun, and Linux Boxes) to be run through the same monitor and or keyboard.

    The Sun allready has a great serial console. It can hard-reset the system. It can be told to boot off a diffrent disk controler. It can be told to boot off the same disk controler, but a diffrent disk (which no PC serial port re-director I have ever seen lets you!). It can let you boot off the distro CD and reformat the hard drive and re-install from scratch, all while the machine is sitting in a telco closet 300 miles from your closest employee. The Mac uses the same OpenFirmware base stuff, so I would hope it has retained this as well, but I have no direct knolage, nor really high hopes that Apple kept that bit of non-graphical greatness.

    Another nice feature of a serial console vs. a switcher is you can run all the lines into a program that does logging, allows interactiave logins, and watches the log for anything an operator might need to look into "panic" "PAIRTY" and the like. You can get notice of a failure before sombody calls you, or before you next monitoring sweep. You can also get some log to analise, rather then thinking the new Froon2000 motherboard is a bit more flakey then the Froon1000 you can examine a months logs and get a fialure rate. Hard data is better then a vague feeling.




    My question is does this gizmo let me bypass a damaged boot image and use my "spare" boot drive (or CD) so I can do a re-install? That would be kinda tough since it isn't the disk controler.

  • I set up a little mini-distribution of Linux, called "Serial Terminal Linux" that allows you to use an old laptop as a serial console. A single boot floppy puts you directly into Minicom. You can get it athttp://members.wri.com/johnnyb/serialli nux/ [wri.com]. Very useful. I configure servers at a desk that I don't want a monitor taking up space on, so I just use a little laptop. Works wonders.
  • I use an 8 port Cybex AutoView 200 with the built in second console port for a LongView reciever.

    You can set up three tiers of 8 port cybex 200's to control up to 512 systems from one menu. Also, for remote administration, the 200 has support for one local console (plugged directly into the switch) and a second console up to 500 feet away over standard cat 5. The two consoles can control different systems independently or (this is cool --) the same system at the same time. The colors on the "remote" screen faded and stuff at first, but i ran some shielded cat5 with shielded ends and hooked the remote console up with a flat panel monitor and it is perfect 400 feet away.

    ~GoRK
  • After all, how do you send the three-finger salute over a serial line?

    BREAK

    At least that's what I use with our Intel N440BX servers. (Yes, some things never seem to change; using BREAK in this way dates back to Teletype days.)

    -Ed

  • Assuming this is the only ISA card in your system (pretty likely on a server), none of the issues you raise are relevent. It doesn't do DMA, its IO needs are small, it doesn't need PnP, it isn't going to need to share IRQ's, parity is a non-issue, and why should the fact that it's a 5V bus make a bit of difference? All the problems you mention would be genuine issues in many other circumstances--but not this one. Once your server is actually up and running, the only thing this board draws from the bus is power. Prior to that, its performance falls squarely in the "good enough for the purpose" category.

    It's a sign of a green engineer to reject a solution on irrelevent technical grounds. There are legitimate reasons to reject an ISA solution--such as the fact that newer server boards don't even support it--but the factors that make it a crappy bus for almost any other purpose just don't apply here.

    -Ed
  • Have you ever worked in a data center environment?

    What you should be envisioning here is not "a seperate serial terminal for each server".

    You should be envisioning "a terminal server hooked to a bunch of servers, and you telnet into it".

    That's one of the tools we use in data center environments, and it's been tried and tested and proven as a good solution for decades.

    Even for small environments, if you have never worn out a video port or a keyboard port then you haven't done enough of your proposed solution to really comprehend the problems inherent.

    I'd far rather buy a cheap multiport serial card for my main workstation at home and hook my other boxes up to it than futz around with KVM switches or moving cables around.

    PC connectors aren't built to be used that much. It's a fact. That's why enterprise hardware doesn't use those connectors.
  • You want an entire TCP/IP stack on the card too?

    Why not. I used to have a 3COM Ethernet bridge that supported RS-232 and telnet for the console terminal. It needed a terminal connected to the serial port for initial setup but everything after that could be done by telnet.

  • You shouldn't have to take up a slot with a card that pretends to be a graphics card because some tiny BIOS program can't be bothered talking to the serial port directly. So, I don't think this solution is "proper", as in "the right thing to do".

    That doesn't make it any less useful if you are stuck with a machine that doesn't have serial BIOS support.

    I hope, however, that PC vendors will start to adopt the (open firmware standard [sun.com]). People are working on an open source implementation for PCs.

  • Bah.

    The last NT Admin is no longer employed in the CC
    of the university, but he's still around, since
    he is a postgraduate student. He was wondering
    why he couldn't login and dropped in.

    I'll remember to post a full description of the
    organization I work for and a staff list next
    along with a short list of recent changes next
    time I post. Not.

    -W
  • Er... that was the only NT box in the computer room, and we no longer employ an NT Administrator (NT Administrator? isn't that an oxymoron?) - hence that box was noone's responsibility. I took the responsibility, and replaced it with something manageable that actually works without the need for a trained monkey to go around rebooting the damn thing every now and then. As an added bonus, I used an old vt420 (we have shitloads of them gathering dust downstairs) to replace a perfectly good 17" monitor that was wasted on a goddamn server.

    I guess it must suck to work for you.

    -W
  • This glitch is well known, but there is a fix. Take a look at Sunsolve, (SRD B 20427). [sun.com] (Not sure if this is publicly available).

  • Actually I want the network version. I want to be able to telnet into it, or better yet SSH in. PCI would be nice from a performance standpoint, but not needed.

  • Provided you can telnet in. The "watchdog" daemon, as I call it, would only require a telephone to reboot the computer. I should point out that Ctrl-Alt-Delete requires the use of a daemon as well. (The original poster wanted to send a three-finger salute via a serial line).

    Of course, if daemons are not available and the system really is hung, there are still a couple of options. You could have the power supply hooked up to an X-10 device that is designed to be operated remotely by telephone, for instance.

  • First, as an earlier poster pointed out, it's ISA only, not PCI (and server-class motherboards supporting ISA are quickly becoming extinct).

    Intel's C440GX+ motherboard [intel.com] has a single ISA slot...

    Third, the last thing many of us who are maintaining machines with 1 or 2 rack unit heights is another card to try to fit in there. Some of us would like to use what little room we have for things like Gigabit Ethernet cards.

    Get a bigger rack. :P

    However, even serial console support isn't perfect. After all, how do you send the three-finger salute over a serial line?

    This is actually possible! No, really. Back in the days when I was a BBS sysop (about 10 years ago), I ran a little TSR program (gawd, remember those? :) called watchcat or watchdog or something like that ... and what it would do is sit in the background, waiting for your modem to ring. If your modem rang a set number of times (I set mine to 4 rings), then it would reboot the computer. And since the modem, is after all, connected to a serial line, voila! three finger salute via serial line. :) (Ok, so I'm a smart ass :)

    I'd be willing to bet, though, that it would not be difficult at all to write a program such as this as say, a Linux/BSD/whatever daemon. Perhaps such a program even exists already (I never thought to look). Any takers? :)

  • Oh absolutely, it would be quite useful, i.e., before the Linux kernel loads, for example, if there is a bad hard disk or the BIOS' CMOS memory gets erased.

    However, if you don't normally have these sort of problems (yeah, right, Murphy loves computers), the capability of doing remote admin is built right into the Linux kernel. Just compile in the "Allow serial port consoles" or some such option, and make sure your init scripts set 'CONSOLE=ttys0' or whatever, and you're all set.

    Of course, like I said, if you have boot problems before the kernel loads (oops, I recompiled the kernel remotely, rebooted and forgot to run 'lilo' :) then your screwed without this card.
  • I spoke with Jonathan there and he said that they are developing a PCI version of this card that is VGA-compliant, as well as a pass-through one (so this doesn't have to be the only graphics card, which is currently true). 6-8 weeks before anybody knows more. That's what I'm holding out for.

    I bet the VGA thing is what's causing Dells to freak out.

  • &lt rant&gt

    Why would anyone in their right mind make a new design based on the ISA bus ? This is a brain dead bus, without interrupt sharing and severe limitations on DMA and IO. There does not exist a complete specification on the bus, only a collection of random writings and books. There was an attempt by ieee (?) to make a spec, but they failed because of the ugliness of the existing implementations. It has an even more kludgey and unreliable plug and pray specification. The bus has no error correction, parity or ECC. I refuse to put any ISA card in any new computer (cheap home pc or desktop for the secretary), and this card is meant for servers !!

    Oh, did I mention that the bus is +5V only ?

    Oh well, back to work.

    &lt/rant&gt

  • Their block diagram shows one cable going to the keyboard and another going to the reset input.

    It looks like you can give a hardware reset, not gust the nerve pinch.
  • Those guys are great. You can telnet to their BIOS with:

    telnet demo.realweasel.com [realweasel.com]

    They said:

    We know that it is possible to set a BIOS password and other annoying things but we ask that you be kind to the next person trying out the PC Weasel..

    As you can guess, a sucker put a password. If he reads me, I can assure him that he's a childish looser.

    Cheers,

    --fred

  • Some server boards already have this (Score:3)

    by _damnit_ ( 1143 ) on Sunday March 05, 2000 @11:37PM (#1223800) Journal
    Intel has something of this sort on their "server" motherboards. They call it the Emergency Management Port. Here's their description: <BLOCKQUOTE>The built-in Emergency Management Port (EMP) provides remote emergency access via modem or direct serial connection from the COM2 port regardless of the server's current state or network availability. The EMP console offers the following operating system-independent basic management features: system power up/down control, system reset, access to the chassis FRU inventory. </BLOCKQUOTE>This does not appear to be as simply cool as a "real server's" console port, but it's better than monitor and keyboard.<BR><BR>Does anyone know if Intel will start supporting Forth toolkits (Open Boot in Sun world) with Itanium? If not, what do they plan on using? <BR><BR>If my post is screwed up, sorry. /. doesn't seem to be interpreting allowed HTML tags.


    _damnit_

  • For Further Information... (Score:3)

    by rbrander ( 73222 ) on Monday March 06, 2000 @12:32AM (#1223801) Homepage
    Have a look at the newsletter [cuug.ab.ca] of the Calgary Unix Users Group [cuug.ab.ca], specifically last September's Issue [cuug.ab.ca] and hit the "PC Weasel Released" article.

    It contains an interview with Herb Peyerl, sometime NetBSD maven and the principal software designer, and some more photos.

    But just a few off-the-cuff comments in response to previous posts:

    • Herb mentioned the price to me a few weeks ago, and I already forgot - but it's in the very low hundreds;
    • Custom ASICs weren't in the budget, that's for sure; cut them some slack, guys, they have to build a market first;
    • The price will drop even before they get the huge volume required for custom ASIC chips; even a fair-sized production run will make a big difference.
    • And as the web page itself points out, they really couldn't believe nobody else did this - they were finally driven to invent it themselves from need!
    All this, and much more, in the interview.

  • BIOS support for serial console (Score:4)

    by warlock ( 14079 ) on Monday March 06, 2000 @12:53AM (#1223802) Homepage
    OK, a few weeks ago I noticed there was an NT
    box crashing along in our computer room, mostly
    emmiting SMB traffic and broadcasting some radio
    station via realaudio. I felt pitty for the poor
    thing (dual PII-233, 256MB ECC RAM, pair of nice UW drives etc) and decided to install a real OS on
    it.

    Upon openning the case I realized it had an
    on-board graphics card, albeit a sucky one,
    so I discarded the ati rage pro that the nt
    admin added. I then proceeded to install freebsd
    on it from scratch. While I was tweaking the BIOS
    settings (intel mobo, phoenix bios) I found an
    option to redirect the console to a serial port :)

    You should have seen the face of that NT admin
    when he saw the box he setup a few months ago
    attached to a vt420 doing what the NT box did and
    outperforming it while at it.

    I wonder why this is not more common - is it so
    bloody hard for the BIOS to redirect the console
    to a serial port? I don't think so. I really don't
    like the idea of an add in board doing that for
    you, it is a major kludge. Perhaps we should
    make some noise to motherboard manufacturers
    until they understand that serial console support
    is a good thing, and it can be a selling point.

    -W

  • Even better.. ethernet (Score:4)

    by jonathanclark ( 29656 ) on Monday March 06, 2000 @01:19AM (#1223803) Homepage
    I want an ethernet version! Who uses serial these days anyway? I suppose you could write your own microcode on one of these things to talk to an ethernet card??

  • My thoughts (Score:5)

    by Otterley ( 29945 ) on Monday March 06, 2000 @12:03AM (#1223804)
    I'm glad more people are beginning to realize that headless operation capability is a great asset to people who have to manage UNIX systems, and that having hardware support for such management is critical. Most UNIX systems vendors (such as Sun) have had this for years now.

    However, my first impression of this card is "too little, too late."

    First, as an earlier poster pointed out, it's ISA only, not PCI (and server-class motherboards supporting ISA are quickly becoming extinct).

    Second, look at that card! It's frigging huge! It looks more like a FPGA prototype; I'm sure the designers could have it converted to a single chip ASIC and make the card 75% smaller.

    Third, the last thing many of us who are maintaining machines with 1 or 2 rack unit heights is another card to try to fit in there. Some of us would like to use what little room we have for things like Gigabit Ethernet cards.

    Finally, I'm not sure there will be much need for this in a few months. Award (now Phoenix) has a gorgeous ServerBIOS [phoenix.com] (which Intel is using on all of its new server motherboards [intel.com]) which supports serial console support. We're using one of their motherboards in all our new systems (I believe that VA Linux Systems uses them too) and we think they kick ass.

    However, even serial console support isn't perfect. After all, how do you send the three-finger salute over a serial line?

Slashdot Top Deals

You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all alike.

Close