Re: Need "console switch" - any ideas?

[Wim Peeters <wim@sonycom.com>]

= From sage-members-owner@usenix.ORG  Thu Jan 14 17:04:27 1999
= Message-ID: <369DFFDD.3B8993F1@pt.cyanamid.com>
= Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 09:31:57 -0500
= From: John Geletej <geletejj@pt.Cyanamid.COM>
= Organization: can usually find what I'm looking for...
= X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (Win95; I)
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= To: SAGE Members <sage-members@usenix.ORG>
= Subject: Need "console switch" - any ideas?
= Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.ORG
= Precedence: bulk

= Greetings all,
= 
= I find myself in need of a "box" that will allow several UNIX
= workstations/servers to be controlled at a single
= keyboard/mouse/monitor. My primary need is for SGI equipment, but I may
= need to incorporate a couple of Sun SPARCStations into the mix as well.
= 
= Anybody out there know of or use such a beastie?
Yep,

We have such a beast(s) in use for some years now,
connected to our SUN and SGI servers, atm switches,we use the same device
to control the serial ports on development boards also, works great.

so we use this to control the consoles, when installing, rebooting
after a crash etc... 

We can connect to the serial interfaces using telnet

something like:
telnet consoles 6012

connects us to serial port 12 on the device and allows us to interact with
the server's console. if you start this in a xterm you can log al in/output to a file
so you always have your console output saved in case you need them.
(In fact we run it that way, start 30 xterms to 30 ports and log in 30 files)


The machine we use is a 
Portmaster 2E from Livingstone
(30 serial ports (= 30 servers) + 1 ethernet ) 
but any box with the same functionality will do.

priceing is incredibly low compared with these VGA switch boxes ;-/

Regards

Wim
= 
= TIA,
= 
= -john g-
= 


-- 
Wim Peeters     

System Manager
SONY  Platform Software Development Center Brussels (PSDC-B)
SONY  Digital Network Solutions Europe Brussels     (DNSE-B)
Sint Stevens Woluwestraat 55 (Rue de Woluwe-Saint-Etienne)
1130 Brussel (Bruxelles), Belgium
Telephone: +32 2 724 86 42 Telefax: +32 2 726 26 86
e-mail: Wim.Peeters@sonycom.com