On 2005-Apr-25, at 10:35 AM, erol wrote:
| On Sun, Apr 24, 2005 at 11:55:02PM -0400, Bryan Fullerton wrote:
|
|
|> I'm contemplating getting some sort of network-capable serial access
|> device to plug a bunch of *NIX boxes into so I can play with them
|> with
|> less fear of having to send someone onsite if/when they barf. I
|> already
|> have a RPC, but that only helps if the boot config isn't buggered up.
|> All the connections would be standard DB9 serial.
|>
|
| I like the Comtrol line of gear , we use it at $dayjob and have never
| had issues with it.
| Check out their multiport serial cards. You'd have to slot it into one
| of the machines you have, but they are quite nice. They do have a
| network appliance for this sort of stuff, but I've never used them.
At ISC we used Comtrol Rocketport multi-port serial PCI cards for
quite a long time. Each PCI card had a single cable which led to a
1U, rack-mount module with one RJ45 socket per serial port, which
could be wired to individual consoles.
Each of our remote installations, which are mainly anycast local
nodes for the F root nameserver, include a dedicated management
server anyway, so using a multi-port serial adapter in that server
fits nicely with the architecture without introducing new and
exciting boxes to manage. We run rtty on the management box, which
means we get comprehensive console logs regardless of whether the
consoles are being inspected by humans. Rtty also allow multiple
users to work on the same console at the same time (although
obviously two people typing at once is not helpful :-).
We run the serial console of the management server into the AUX port
of a router, so we can get remote access to that console, too.
We stopped using Rocketport cards when we started to get servers that
didn't support the old 32-bit PCI cards, and when the newer PCI-X
cards from Comtrol were unsupported by FreeBSD. The new PCI-X cards
are well-supported on Linux, though, I hear.
These days we have an equivalent 1U serial pod which contains USB/
RS232 adapters and a USB hub, all presented to the management server
using USB. We couldn't find a commercially-distributed product like
this, so we wound up making our own.
The other route we looked at was to use second-hand cisco 2511s or
PortMasters, but for us that would introduce additional platforms
into each node that (one way or another) we would wind up having to
support. We would also probably lose the ability to use rtty, which
we really like (and not just because Paul wrote it).
Joe