[PLUG] serial console administration

[Aaron Burt]

On Fri, Sep 23, 2005 at 01:36:21PM -0700, Carla Schroder wrote:
> Is anyone using the serial console for more than the occasional
> fix-of-last-resort?

Hey, don't disparage those fixes-of-last-resort.  When the pager wakes
you at 3AM, would you rather go clickity-click at your home computer
and go back to bed, or get dressed and drive to the data center?

> Since servers are presumably networked via Ethernet, why would you
> routine server administration over a poky ole serial line?

"Me too" to what Eli and Paul have said.  When I worked there, serial
console was a _must_ at OSDL, both for the production and for the
systems we made available to folks.  You'd be surprised how much nicer
it is to be able to remotely* work on a system without worrying about
its network and sshd falling out from under you.

Another quite valuable thing was that you could capture kernel-panic
and other console messages, and perform Magic SysRQ spells.  The
kernel-hackers appreciated that.

If you have several serial-console systems, Conserver is quite
valuable.  It logs console output and suchlike.

Oh, and remote power-control is the natural complement to
remote-console.  APC makes some nice IP-enabled PDUs.


*For OSDL's purposes, "remotely" means "from anywhere in the world you
can get an Internet connection".