[plug] remote control of a server

[Craig Ringer]

On Tuesday 13 November 2001 13:19, Alan Graham wrote:
> I've recently put my firewall in a place that's hard to get at, physically.
>  This means I have to move it around to connect a monitor and keyboard to
> it if there's any boot problems.  Is there any way round this?
You can buy devices that provide a ssh login service over ethernet and give 
access to one or more serial ports. So you can use serial console control 
over the network, allowing you to mess with it if it gets past lilo. Don't 
think you can control it before that unless you have a server specialised 
bios that allows you to select console over serial in bios. I use an old one 
I picked up at on the co-located server at Indigo networks, its a wonder of a 
thing as I can reboot the server remotely without sitting for the terrifying 
minute waiting for it to come back up...

> Does anyone know if I can do something similar to a linux box?  I'm
> thinking of something (linux bios?) that allows the display of the console
> log as a minimum, over a serial line or second e/net card perhaps?
More likely a non-linux-specific custom BIOS for your board. Expect serious 
prices and availability only for server boards.