Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2000 14:41:38 -0500 From: Rob Fowler <rjf@cs.rice.edu> To: hardware@freebsd.org Subject: [Fwd: someone has an idea ?] Message-ID: <3909E972.429276D2@cs.rice.edu>
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It's easy if the operator can come in over the net, but if you want a "front-panel shutdown" function on a box without keyboard or other obvious I/O devices, you'll have to make do with what your hardware has. If there is a button or switch you can use as a sensor, then all you need is a demon monitoring that function. This may require hardware and/or software hacking. A couple of years ago we were running a small keyboard-less cluster that was usually FreeBSD, but occasionally had to be brought up under Linux. The solution was to use the presence absence of a LILO floppy as the control for bringing the system up. The drill was to put LILO floppies in all the drives (or remove them) and force reboots over the net through a script. Sleazy, but effective. If the floppy drive is not being used, you might try the inverse of the floppy trick. Write a script that tries to open a file called <obscure_name> on the floppy and halts if successful. Run it under cron with an appropriate interval, or just wrap it in sleep loop and start the script when the system boots. Tell the operator to stick the bright red floppy in the drive and wait xx seconds before powering down. The tricky thing may be signalling the operator when it really is OK to power down. If the box is new enough to shut itself off on a halt, then you're done. Otherwise, you may have to have the kernel beep a couple of times after it's done sync'ing. -- Rob > > On 28-Apr-00 Philippe Charron wrote: > > Hello, > > > > Im a trying to do a FreeBSD box without any keyboard (this machine will > > be a Squid, HTTP and FTP serveur for non specialist person that can't > > handle with a Unix system). > > > > As the user can't shutdown properly the computer, he has to press the > > power button to switch off the box. > > This leads to problems with fsck and inode lost in the system. > > > > Does anyone have an idea to solve this problem ? > > > > Thanx in avance > > Philippe > >> > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message
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