help with conserver

[shimi]

On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 7:25 AM, Ido Admon <idoadm at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> >
> > hi shimi, thanks. yes, i'm sorry if i wasn't clear enough. the console
> > is working flawlessly when physically connected. here's my
> > conserver.cf (192.168.43.168 is my laptop):
> >
> > root at krzysztof:~# cat /etc/conserver/conserver.cf
> > # The character '&' in logfile names are substituted with the console
> > # name.
> > #
> > config * {
> > }
> >
> > default * {
> >         logfile /var/log/conserver/&.log;
> >         timestamp "";
> >         rw *;
> > }
> >
> > console serial {
> >         master localhost;
> >         type device;
> >       device /dev/ttyS0;
> >         baud 19200;
> >         parity none;
> > }
> >
> > access * {
> >         trusted 192.168.43.168;
> >         trusted 127.0.0.1;
> > }
> >
> >
> >
> > and the relevant line in inittab:
> >
> > root at krzysztof:~# grep ttyS0 /etc/inittab
> > T0:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 19200 vt100
> >
> > and what setserial says:
> >
> > root at krzysztof:~# setserial /dev/ttyS0
> > /dev/ttyS0, UART: 16550A, Port: 0x03f8, IRQ: 4
> >
> >
> > thanks again!
> > ido
>
> ok, i'm an idiot. of course /dev/ttyS0 is not the console itself but the
> serial device. that's not going to work. but /dev/console doesn't work
> either, and it seems that conserver can't actually do what i want,
> which is to access the local console, not some other server connected
> via the serial port. i'm not sure how, if at all, it can be done.
>


Truth to be told, I really did wonder how this is supposed to work (I never
used conserver; What you're trying to do is typically done in the IT world
by devices like this:
http://www.perle.com/products/IOLAN-DS-Terminal-Server.shtml ... usually
with 16 ports and beyond...) - but I assumed you researched this and found
that it's supposed work :)

I have to wonder, what is so special on the serial console that you want to
specifically use it? I mean, if you have to go over IP anyways, what does
it matter if it's 'serial' or not? The usual advantage of serial (IMHO) is
being out-of-band and not dependent on the machine's networking
configuration, which is not the case here, obviously. The other is maybe
the output of kernel messages (but that goes into files, or even to remote
machines if set up correctly).

Maybe you don't want the SSH encryption overhead? You could run telnetd
instead... or conserver can be used with 'exec' instead of 'device' if you
want the parallel connections feature.

So, what is the purpose? :)

-- Shimi
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