[svlug] Hooking up a terminal

[Rafael Skodlar]

On Sun, Oct 31, 2004 at 06:24:15AM -0800, Don Marti wrote:
> A PC and a terminal are both DTE so you need a null
> modem cable to connect them.
> 
> http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Text-Terminal-HOWTO-11.html
> 
> Also see Documentation/serial-console.txt in the
> kernel source if you want to make the terminal the
> system console.
> 
> Jim Dennis once pointed out to me that if you have
> two servers with two serial ports each, you can
> connect them in the "buddy system" so that if you
> lose networking on one you can ssh in to the other
> and get on its serial console.

Good point. I daisy chained a number of systems that way in one computer 
center to provide cheap console access to all of them. You need to have a 
method to know how they are connected.

One problem remained unsolved though, server reset after crash. It's
unfortunate that PC architecture desn't support some escape sequence on
serial ports to bring the system to a boot prompt like Sun hardware does.

One day we'll have real computers for common use I hope.

> 
> -- 
> Don Marti
> http://zgp.org/~dmarti/
> dmarti at zgp.org                       Keep your mangement off my digital rights.

-- 
Rafael
"There really can be no debate about it now: natural human ability to
percieve number does not exceed four!"
--- George Ifrah, The Universal History of Numbers.