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Author: Philip
Date: 18-12-01 21:02
I have a bunch of headless servers. What I did was hook one of them up with a monitor keyboard and then configure all the others to use the serial port as the console. Then just run a bunch of null modem serial cables from each machine to the one with the monitor/keyboard. When I want to get on the console of one I just swap cables around...
works pretty well for me.
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Author: Dan Langille
Date: 19-12-01 00:34
I've heard about serial consoles many times. I've never tried them though. One day....
I bet you could get a switch to toggle between the serial ports so you didn't have to swap cables?
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Author: Philip
Date: 19-12-01 20:07
Yeah, you can, but they can get expensive... and I find that I do it so rarely it's not that big of a deal to just swap them. It *is* nice when I do need them though :)
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Author: Iain Patterson
Date: 21-12-01 09:35
Doh, a flag in the kernel config! That's interesting. I wish I'd known that before I spent HKD$1400 (about US$200) on a funky KVM switch and cables!
Actually I needed the switch for my other machines anyway :-) and thought I might as well plug the FreeBSD box into it to kill another bird while I was throwing stones but it's nice to find out WHY it wasn't working.
Nice article!
Aside: my switch really is funky. You can switch screens from the keyboard. Control+Alt+Shift then X then Enter where X is the number of the display you want. Very nice...
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Author: Dan Langille
Date: 21-12-01 18:39
A coworker's switch uses control control N ENTER.
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Author: Iain Patterson
Date: 22-12-01 16:23
Hehe, that wouldn't work for me. I play games on one of the boxes so control, control N enter is a combination I could quite conceivably need...
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Author: Philip
Date: 05-01-02 01:24
I don't have the URL anymore, but somewhere out there a guy built his own keyboard switcher that was really funky. He made is own switcher box that in addition to keyboard/video also took serial inputs from all the machines. He then wrote an application for each machine (windows, mac, and unix) that put a little box in each bottom corner of the screen. Move the mouse into that corner and it would send a signal on the serial port to the switcher and switch you to the machine "on that side".
Pretty crazy :)
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Author: You4eea
Date: 06-06-02 02:38
Thank God, I found this article.....
Man I thought I was gonna have to spend $1400.00 myself.
FreeBSD Diary is were it is at.
Thanks for the money saved.
You4eea
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