Hardware Console Redirection

[Tom Judge]

Brian A. Seklecki wrote:
>
> Right, and the Dell PE uses "com 2", or "com1" (when properly counting 
> from 0), ah la 0x2F8 which is logically connected to a serial port on 
> the DRAC5 via the daughterboard connection.
>
The drac [345] Cards actually hook into or present a new vga adapter to
the system (this can be seen as an ati chipset on the drac 4 pci addin
cards) They also present a soft keyboard an mouse to the system via a
set of usb devices.   If you also use the bios console redirection the
bios is sent to the configured serial port.

FreeBSD fully supports the dell drac [345] cards (at least RELENG_6 does
which i guess means 7 does), I have a largs number of these cards
working perfectly in production.

Using the drac web interface you can send the system a scroll lock and
scroll back the system console as if you where using the physical
console. So there is no need to be conected all of the time.

On a side note it is advisable to put (device kbdmux) into your kernel
if you want to use both the physical console and the drac console
access, otherwise the usb devices provided by the drac disable the
physical keyboard.

If you have DRAC cards in you dell systems I would recomend the console
access in them over serial port redirection as it is much simpler to setup.

Tom