monitoring serial consoles (was Re: erorrs from spec_getpages)

[Dan Langille]

Moving this thread over to -questions, please don't include 
freebsd-stable at freebsd.org in the reply

On 18 Oct 2003 at 19:39, Dmitry Morozovsky wrote:

> On Sat, 18 Oct 2003, Dan Langille wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> 
> DL> > Well I was in impression you've swapped out the disk, not cable, hence my
> DL> > assumption. Sure it may be wrong cable; however, I suppose at least some ATA
> DL> > errors should be logged somewhere before spec_getpages...
> DL>
> DL> They may have been, but they were not in /var/log/messages.  If they
> DL> were on the console, they were scrolled off the top.  I couldn't
> DL> scroll up because the keyboard hadn't been attached at boot, and I
> DL> had not modified the kernel to allow for that situation.
> 
> That's why I always try to set up logged serial console for any machine with
> more than marginal importance. BTW, comms/conserver-com port is of great use
> for this purpose!

I have an 8 port serial Boca card here, which I have yet to get 
running.  How does comms/conserver-com work?  I couldn't determine 
that from the FAQ.  Does it need any hardware?  How does it monitor 
the serial console?  Do you connect two boxes together via their 
serial ports?  Box A reports on Box B, and vice versa?

Or does it just monitor the serial console and report back to a 
central server?

> I assumed here that usually you have more than one machine per physical
> location; otherwise, I'd set up remote logging, preferrably to two different
> machines via two different interfaces, but such ideal network design is
> *rarely* reqchable ;-)

I have one location which has only one box.  That box and the 
bandwidth is kindly donated by BCHosting.com, and hosts 
freebsddiary.org, freshports.org, etc.  It does about 45GB a month 
(at last check).  I'd like to have a serial console there.  But if it 
could the console remotely, that would be good.

Cheers
-- 
Dan Langille : http://www.langille.org/