Date: Sat, 30 Dec 1995 08:20:39 -0600 (CST) From: Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com> To: hasty@rah.star-gate.com (Amancio Hasty Jr.) Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: syscons driver Message-ID: <199512311606.KAA10081@brasil.moneng.mei.com> In-Reply-To: <199512300519.VAA00740@rah.star-gate.com> from "Amancio Hasty Jr." at Dec 29, 95 09:19:51 pm
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> >>> Joe Greco said: > > That's not always feasible or possible (different types of disks or > > controllers, for example). I hate having to take apart a machine to drop a > > graphics card into it just so I can install... > > > > (ok ok ok I admit it, all of my boxes have graphics cards right now, but the > > ultimate goal is to run mostly serial consoles, because going around the > > back of the equipment racks and plugging and unplugging monitor and keyboard > > extenders to gain console access to a box is silly). > > > > It's bad enough that sysinstall seems to be linked to syscons ... > > Well, it seems to me that you guys are crafty enough to sort out a way > to do a system intall. Yes, but it's a matter of convenience and flexibility. I can reinstall my Solaris fileservers at work from anywhere in the world simply by having somebody drop in the appropriate CD, reboot the machine, and unplug the keyboard. I can then dial in through the terminal server and get access to the serial console. Inconvenience? Minimal: Unplug kbd. And you can even get around that, in a dire emergency, as long as the system was up and running in UNIX (reset the OBP values to use the serial console). Convenience? I can be reinstalling or fixing my fileservers from Jamaica. I can reinstall my FreeBSD boxes down at sol.net by getting in my car, driving down to the office, climb around in back of the racks to switch VGA and keyboard connections, having to pull a box out of the racks if there doesn't happen to BE a VGA card in it, etc. Boy am I ever S.O.L. if I happen to be down in Jamaica when a box goes south. The unfortunate reality is that at work, there ARE other people who could try to fix the box, but I have the flexibility and technology available to fix it myself. Down at sol.net, there is nobody else who can try tofix dead boxes, and I don't have the flexibility available to me to do it from remote. What I'm doing is sufficiently similar to what an ISP or other larger institution might be doing - you set aside a dozen FreeBSD PC's for various tasks. Yes, I am crafty enough to figure out how I might do a system install. Or other maintenance (which IS possible at this point in time, with a fair amount of puttering, over a serial console - thanks Bill Paul, etc.!) but it needs to all be practical. And ideally this should include the install. ... JG
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