[rescue] Why .* sucks (was Re: FDDI card)

[George Adkins]

On Monday 25 February 2002 10:29 am, you wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 25, 2002 at 10:19:22AM -0500, George Adkins wrote:
> > Even on the Intel manufactured, high-end chipset motherboards, this does
> > not work.  Sure, it will push the POST display out of the serial port,
> > but that is all.
>
> I had serial console working fine on a peecee; one of the VA Linux boxes. 
> Had to enable serial console in the BIOS, and then enable serial console in
> Linux, but it "worked".  Not great, no OpenBoot, but it worked.
>
> (hrm.. that company went out of business a year ago.... *grin*)
>
Actually, it was VA Linux (Tru-Solutions) 11xx and 12xx series 1U boxes I was 
working the most with.  With the 'serial console' option enabled and Serial 
console enabled under FreeBSD 3.3 and 4.0 / 4.1, as well as a smattering of 
RedHat and other things.

Again, it was the lack of any kind of PROM monitor like OpenBoot or whatever 
that kept it from being useful for what I *really*, *really* needed at the 
time.  Sure, you could serial console to the box if the Kernel was up, and 
you could watch and record the post outputs of the machines via the terminal 
server while they were in the testbed/validation racks, but if they locked up 
tight, you still needed to telnet to the APC Master switch to power-cycle 
them.

When each box gets 72 hours of torture test, and I'm evaluating the output / 
roadworthiness of 30 - 50 boxes in a week-long run, I need all the automation 
I can get.

George