accessing shell when gnome locks up.

[Les Mikesell]

Andras Simon wrote:

>>
>> These days you'd be much more likely to have another computer or laptop
>>   with an ethernet connector available than a serial terminal or cable
>> with the right-sized, right-gender ends.  If you don't have a hub, use a
>> crossover ethernet cable to connect and use ssh.  Or get wireless
>> working and forget about all that nonsense.
> 
> If you regularly need to have access to your computer over the
> network, then you already have sshd running on it, and you have no
> problem to solve.

I generally don't find computers to be very useful without networking 
and the ability to access them without touching them.

> But I'd hate (read: wouldn't know how to do it
> securely, in a finite amount of time) to open up a port and run sshd
> just to be able to log in remotely once in a blue moon to kill some
> stupid gnome thingy.

Pretty much every linux distribution comes with that capability already 
carefully planned and does the right thing if you install it.

> The serial approach is relatively simple and you
> don't have to worry about future security holes discovered in the
> tcp/ip stack, iptables and sshd.

Other people are worrying about that.  All you have to do is use good 
passwords and keep your system up to date.  Much less attention is 
probably being paid to the security risks of mgetty or serial ports.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com