serielle console/headless clients

[Phil Meyer]

ronald wrote:
> hi
> following the last discussion about headless clients.
>
> one question:
> are there differences between the setup for a serielle console (esp. 
> catch kernel panic's)
>
> http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid39_gci1118136,00.html 
>
>
> and
> the setup for headless clients ?
Serial console is serial console, whether server or client.  On PC type 
hardware, the BIOS does not support serial console any more.  There used 
to be jumper switches on the mother board to force serial console, but 
since the death of MS DOS, that option no longer exists.

However, once serial console is set up, (whether SUN, HP, IBM, PC, etc) 
the real question is how to capture it for later study in case of 
issues, and still be able to use it when needed.

This is what good terminal servers do.  There are several terminal 
servers that store lots of screens of console data.

In a data center where people know what to do, terminal servers rule 
instead of KVMs.  There are differences in commercial terminal servers.  
Some have lots of memory per port, some do not.  Check before purchasing.

Here is an interesting plan and discussion for making a PC with lots of 
serial ports into a terminal server with capabilities of storing as much 
console data as you could want.

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/console-server/article.html

Its worth a read for those who may not have done allot of serial 
consoles, and also explains why this is a good thing.

Good luck!