Multiple serial consoles via null modem cable

[Marin Atanasov]

Yeap, that makes sense :)

Thank you, I'm gonna try it as soon as I get that device :)

Thanks again,
Marin

On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 8:45 AM, Jeremy Chadwick
<freebsd at jdc.parodius.com>wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 08:34:17AM +0200, Marin Atanasov wrote:
> > Thank you a lot for your feedback!
> >
> > Now to the real question again, because I'm a little confused now - can I
> > still get a usb-to-serial port converter having let's say 8 serial ports
> and
> > then connect each machine to the usb-to-serial hub and manage them
> remotely
> > from a single location (the host having the usb-to-serial hub)? That way
> I
> > just specify a serial port number and I get to a specific machine?
> >
> > The model provided by Boris looks nice, and that was my initial idea, but
> > I'm not sure if I could get it working under FreeBSD. Is conserver or
> > conserver-com able to handle this? I know that cu uses COM1 only, but
> will
> > conserver able to handle serial consoles on different ports, since the
> > usb-to-serial port would appear as multiple serial ports.
>
> I'm referencing the product Charles showed, but the topology would look
> like this:
>
> +------------------------+
> |   USB to serial hub    |
> |                       U1---- FreeBSD box running conserver
> |                        |
> |                        |
> +-P1---P2---P3---P4---..-+
>  |    |    |    |
>  |    |    |    |
>  |    |    |    `-- box #4
>  |    |    `------- box #3
>  |    `------------ box #2
>  `----------------- box #1
>
> "U1" is the uplink port, which has to connect to something -- in this
> case the FreeBSD box where conserver would run.  The uplink port would
> connect to a single USB port on the FreeBSD box.
>
> The cabling between a port (Px) and a box would be serial (probably
> DB9).
>
> What you end up with on the FreeBSD box is a series of /dev entries
> which are associated with all of the ports on the USB to serial hub,
> using ucom(4).  For example:
>
> /dev/ttyU0 = P1 = box #1
> /dev/ttyU1 = P2 = box #2
> ...
>
> You'd then tell conserver using its configuration file that "box name
> foo is attached to /dev/ttyU0, box name bar is attached to /dev/ttyU1"
> and so on.
>
> Then to get access to the serial console of either foo or bar, you'd SSH
> to the FreeBSD machine and type "console foo" or "console bar".  Voila.
>
> Make sense?
>
> --
> | Jeremy Chadwick                                   jdc at parodius.com |
> | Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
> | UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
> | Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
>
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-- 
Marin Atanasov Nikolov
dnaeon AT gmail DOT com
daemon AT unix-heaven DOT org