Re: Serial Console

Hey, Jim.

> Hi. I was reading this thread and thought I'd
> share some info to this list.

   ;-)  Excellent.  Thanks, Jim - good information.

> I do have my OpenBrick setup as a headless
> router/gateway where it uses Com 1 as its console.
> You can configure grub to use com 1 as your console.
> I have the following defined in my grub.conf:
>
> serial --unit=0 --speed=9600 --word=8 --parity=no
> --stop=1
> terminal --timeout=10 serial console
>
> This configures my com 1 9600/N/8/1. I believe
> the grub output goes to both VGA and com 1.

   That's awesome.  Does that mean that the kernel bootup is also spewed to 
com 1 as well, and thus a remote terminal will receive all of that?  It 
sounds like that's what you've got: and that's cool.

> I also added a line in /etc/inittab:
>
> s1:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -i -L 9600 ttyS0 vt100

   Yep: I knew [read] that you could do this but never did it.  :-P  I think 
that also means that Alt-F1 or Ctrl-Alt-F1 will come up with a blank screen 
[no login], but there are probably ways of using that screen space.
   As an example, I use tty8 for a constant status screen on one system by 
adding this to an rc.local startup script:

# Turn off console blanking for console 8
echo -e "\033[9;0]" > /dev/tty8
open -c 8 -s /usr/local/script/auto_start_mon

   The status screen in this case is split up in sections using 'splitvt' 
and since the consoles are in 80x50 size, you can fit a lot of status onto 
the one screen.  [In this case 'top', network bandwidth using 'sar', and 
raid monitoring by doing a 'cat /proc/mdstat'.]

   After setting this up we never did standardize on doing this with the 
rest of the machines we have - never got the chance to do so.

> I use to set up remote access this way back in the
> old days when we didn't have broadband. I still see
> applications for it though. Cheers.

   Yep.  Personally I want to set up com 1 terminal access so that I can 
always get into machines locally through a laptop and a null modem cable if 
need be.  There are a few occasions where that's helpful.

	- Chris

-- 
Chris Knadle
[email protected]