help with conserver

[Ido Admon]

It was a peachy Monday, May 20 2013, 07:52:21 when shimi
<linux-il at shimi.net> wrote:

> 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

oh just doing everything in the most convoluted way possible :) the
idea was to have a shell session that's always on, so to speak, but i
guess nohup can help with that somewhat. you're right, of course, in
saying that being dependent on the network makes the whole idea
pointless. thanks for clarifying things for me!