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Date:      Mon, 25 Apr 2005 10:28:59 -0700
From:      Jeff Behl <jbehl@fastclick.com>
To:        Eric Anderson <anderson@centtech.com>
Cc:        current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: serial/ether console & ramblings
Message-ID:  <426D28DB.70600@fastclick.com>
In-Reply-To: <426CFA51.3060003@centtech.com>
References:  <E1DQ2Gt-000C9O-Jx@cs1.cs.huji.ac.il> <426CFA51.3060003@centtech.com>

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Eric Anderson wrote:

> Danny Braniss wrote:
>
>> hi,
>>     I was about to plunge in and 'try' to cleanup the serial console
>> stuff, when it downed on me that newer machines are arriving without
>> serial
>> port! there goes that idea. So USB/serial dongle came to mind, might
>> work, but messy, FireWire is not universaly available.
>> So, why not serial over ethernet? IPMI 'was' to have solved
>> this, but it will (if at all) work on server class MB only, and im still
>> looking for a Unix Viewer.
>>
>>     In my case, i have been using the serial console to debug stuff, but
>> being of the old school, i try to stay away from debuggers :-), so
>> printf and stack trace will do.
>>
>>     So here are some of my quesions:
>>         o - is there some standard? ok, refrase, are there some
>>              standards?
>>         o - any WIP?, i'm checking out Robert Watson's ethercons
>>         o - any great ideas?
>
>
> There are a couple of ports that seem to try to use IPMI.  I haven't
> tried them yet though.  (sysutils/freeipmi and sysutils/ipmitool).
>
> I can tell you that being about to do serial over ethernet (and
> possibly power cycling) would be incredibly handy.
>
> Eric
>
>
>
NIC drivers have to be made aware of IPMI in order for it to function
when a shared NIC is used.  This is not the case with the bge driver, at
the very least.  See:

http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/htdig/freebsd-net/2005-March/thread.html#6725

This is also a very big issue for us and we're considering hiring a
contractor to get the relevant parts put into the driver...




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