Source for DVI/USB KVM switch, cables

[Chip Marshall]

On April 25, 2008, Ben Scott sent me the following:
>   Of course.  All the "real Unix hardware" OEMs have had good serial
> console support from day one.  It's pretty much a requirement.  Not so
> on the IBM-PC.  But a lot of server hardware supposedly supports
> serial console.  As Bill says, what you actually get can vary quite a
> lot.  For the Intel motherboard that runs this list server, if you
> enable serial console, the BIOS runs out of stack space during POST
> and crashes!  (Good quality control there, Intel.  Do you test this
> shit at all before you ship it?)  But I've got another 1U Intel mobo
> at home that actually seemed to work (when I tried it briefly).

Most "server-grade" PC hardware has serial console support for the BIOS,
and any Linux/BSD variant can be configured to use serial console once
it takes over.  The biggest problem I've seen is with RAID controllers.
A lot of them will work with serial consoles, but I've come across some
that have these terrible configuration GUIs that simple can't work with
serial. For the few of those we have in the field, we've used Lantronix
Spiders to get single port KVM-over-IP.

-- 
Chip Marshall <chip at 2bithacker.net>
http://weblog.2bithacker.net/                        PGP key ID 43C4819E
v4sw5PUhw4/5ln5pr5FOPck4ma4u6FLOw5Xm5l5Ui2e4t4/5ARWb7HKOen6a2Xs5IMr2g6CM
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
Url : http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/private/gnhlug-discuss/attachments/20080426/8670c9e4/attachment.bin