Summary: using a terminal server for accessing system consoles

From: Steven Sakata (steven@hawaii.edu)
Date: Tue Dec 08 1998 - 17:55:56 CST


Thank you to all of you who responded so quickly:

David Beard
Grant Beattie
Stephen Grund
Michael Kriss
Joseph Kwan
Damon LaCaille
Grant Lowe
Brett Lymn
Mr. MGO
Marc Newman
Chris O'Neal
Kai O'Yang
Philip Plane
Greg Polanski
Jim Robertori
Jim Seavey
Nick Trimbee
Ning Zhang

It seems that Annex was the most popular terminal server. Some of the
others brands were Lantronix, Cisco, Digi International, and Central Data.
All of them seemed to have the capability to password protect access to the
terminal server, and all of them seemed to have a way of forcing a port free.
Noone reported any problems of the terminal server sending a break signal to
the server.

Here's some other miscellaneous notes:
- One person attached the ethernet port on terminal server to a specific
  system via a cross-over cable. This way people would have to login to
  that specific system prior to connecting to the terminal server (for added
  security).
- To protect against the break signal, the eeprom "ttya-ignore-cd" can be
  set to "true" and the "ttya-rts-dtr-off" can be set to "false".
- Numerous people mentioned opening a bunch of xterms so that they can capture
  the console output.
- Others used a UNIX box with a multiport serial card instead of a terminal
  server.
- Some preferred using a KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) switch instead of a
  terminal server configuration.
- Big plus with the terminal server set up is the saving of physical space.
> Steven Sakata <steven@hawaii.edu> on 12/07/98 07:44:52 PM
>
>
> To: sun-managers@sunmanagers.ececs.uc.edu
> cc: (bcc: Marc Newman/CHASE)
> Subject: using a terminal server for accessing system consoles
>
>
>
>
> Does anyone have their servers configured so that all the serial port A's
> on
> the servers are attached to a terminal server so that they can have access
> to all the server consoles via telnet'ing to the terminal server and
> connecting
> to the appropriate port? If so, I'm interested in what terminal server you
> are using. These are the features I'm looking for:
>
> - Telnet'ing into the terminal server is password protected.
> - When the terminal server is power-cycled it does NOT send a break signal
> (i.e. equivalent to STOP-A) to the Sun servers. I bring this up, because
> I
> heard that there are some terminal servers in the past have done this.
> - There is way of connecting to the terminal server as a "root-equivalent"
> user that can free up a port if it's in use by someone else (in emergency
> cases).
>
> I'll summarize the responses.
>
> Thanks, Steven.
>
>
>
>
>
>



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