[rescue] Small servers (was Re: WTT: 1.5G of PC2700 for 1G of PC100)

[Shannon Hendrix]

On May 5, 2008, at 16:15 , Ethan O'Toole wrote:

>> That's just a video->serial conversion.
>> I mean a BIOS designed to talk to serial devices, not a video  
>> converter.
>
> The console redirection is actually a function where it sees the  
> characters being written to the video BIOS and pushes them out of a  
> serial port.

On some systems, sure, but not all of them.

> It is not a screen scrape.

It is if the BIOS does direct video writes, and several of them do.

> Anything that writes directly to the video card to speed up display  
> will bypass PC serial consoles.

I have several machines where their console redirect is implemented on  
the video card.

The bottom line is we need a BIOS that puts a command line up on a  
real serial console, no video or BIOS translation, but real console  
support.

> I don't mind the PC stuff really. I mean, once a server is setup and  
> deployed you don't really have to deal with it that much. Even on  
> Sun and SGI boxes you don't really mess with the boot prom stuff  
> once it's up and running.

The issue comes at 0400 when you have to drive out to a server, or  
even fly out to it, all because they could not spend $1.50 in quantity  
to have a real console.

Even at home, it's trivial to use a serial console box to work with  
several boxes, but a bulky and ugly mess to do it with video.


-- 
"Where some they sell their dreams for small desires."