[thelist] Linux connection to multiple Unix boxes via Digiboard?

[Hassan Schroeder]

spinhead wrote:
> 
> What physical connection do you have to the machines? For various reasons we
> want a serial connection to 'tip' (I'm not good with *nix terminology, but
> that what she said) into the Sun boxen.

Ah, yes -- you need to be able to get a console window when doing
an fsck, or if the Sun drops into the prom monitor for any reason. 
So if you're not on a local display you need serial port access.

One alternative is a multi-serial port card on your Linux box,
but I have no experience there.

An approach that I've used in the (chronically underfunded) past:

Some (not all) Suns have two serial ports. A tty login prompt is 
presented on Serial Port A by default. Lets assume your systems
have two serial ports.

Say you have three Suns -- #1, #2, #3 -- in a rack. Get three RS232 
cables and connect #1 port B to #2 port A; #2 port B to #3 port A;
#3 port B to #1 port A. 

Now you can ssh or telnet into #1 and use `tip` to get console on 
#2, and so on. As long as they aren't down simultaneously, you're
set.

And so you don't have to remember which way the connections go -- 
put aliases in DNS like

    hostname    alias
#1   larry      moe-console
#2   moe        curly-console
#3   curly      larry-console


Holler if any of that doesn't make sense :-)
-- 
H*
Hassan Schroeder ----------------------------- hassan at webtuitive.com 
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