[Gllug] Sun hardware/firewall memory

[Ben Fitzgerald]

On Wed, Dec 22, 2004 at 10:17:31AM +0000, Tethys wrote:
> 
> Ben Fitzgerald writes:
> 
> >Yes, a GUI is overkill. It's certainly not of the UNIX design
> >philosophy. I would prefer a terminal. What about this sort
> >of solution connected to a terminal server?:
> >http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Remote-Serial-Console-HOWTO/
> 
> Erm... that's an OS hack to work around the fact that the hardware doesn't
> have a proper serial console. Consequently, it doesn't work in the times
> when you most need a serial console -- those when the OS isn't yet running.
> Remote BIOS level access is what's needed. If the OS is up, then you would
> normally be able to just ssh into it, and a serial console is only useful
> for debugging the kernel or for when you can't get to the box due to network
> problems.

Well, true, it's not the whole solution, but if the O/S sshd or telnetd
are down but the O/S is up it's handy. Like we already said, ILO does
give this, albeit over an annoying GUI interface. Still, you can get to
the box over ILO to get ssh up to connect over the network. This means
you cannot say x86 doesn't have headless support. If you are asked to
justify "why sparc over x86" and you cannot state this in absolute terms
it makes the much cheaper and more powerful x86 based boxes look an
attractive option. Like many things, you can't have your cake and
eat it; you have to pick the balance that suits your needs best.

We seem to be focussing this discussion down to headless bios level
access so I assume you find this very important. This is important
for my job too - I regularly enjoy logging into SUN boxes over ssh to
reset the ALOM interface (which has hung and lost it's IP address!).
That said ALOM is pretty reliable IMHO.

Do you think given the increasing popularity of linux with large
companies that this support will not become more common? Maybe I'm
being too positive about this! ;-)

Ben

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