console access
--On June 7, 2008 2:16:26 PM -0700 Jo Rhett wrote: > On Jun 5, 2008, at 11:35 AM, Paul Schmehl wrote: >> It's not quite that simple. To do that, I have to block out time to >> drive 45 miles during my supposed "off" hours and do the upgrade >> there. Because, if it breaks networking and I'm at home, the server >> will be down for at least an hour until I can drive to the hosting >> company, get access to the server and restore the old kernel. > > Paul, you should arrange with your colocation provider to get an out of > band serial connection to the system, and configure the console to go to > the serial port. We provide that for free at $EMPLOYER and most other > places I know of do it for free or nominal charge. > or if your colocation provider is using any modern server hardware (HP, Dell, IBM) and I bet they do, they should give you lights-out access (HP's ILO2, Dell's DRAC). Then you can even remotely mount iso images from your laptop at home directly on the server (very handy sometimes). -- Andy Kosela ora et labora ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
console access
On Jun 5, 2008, at 11:35 AM, Paul Schmehl wrote: It's not quite that simple. To do that, I have to block out time to drive 45 miles during my supposed "off" hours and do the upgrade there. Because, if it breaks networking and I'm at home, the server will be down for at least an hour until I can drive to the hosting company, get access to the server and restore the old kernel. Paul, you should arrange with your colocation provider to get an out of band serial connection to the system, and configure the console to go to the serial port. We provide that for free at $EMPLOYER and most other places I know of do it for free or nominal charge. Obviously an operation like ours has lights-out access to everything, but we have a dozen or so freebsd developers as customers, and they routinely rebuild their machines entirely without ever visiting the facility. GNN in particular lives in Japan these days so a colo visit would take him a day or two... -- Jo Rhett Net Consonance : consonant endings by net philanthropy, open source and other randomness ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: console access
--On June 7, 2008 2:16:26 PM -0700 Jo Rhett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Jun 5, 2008, at 11:35 AM, Paul Schmehl wrote: It's not quite that simple. To do that, I have to block out time to drive 45 miles during my supposed "off" hours and do the upgrade there. Because, if it breaks networking and I'm at home, the server will be down for at least an hour until I can drive to the hosting company, get access to the server and restore the old kernel. Paul, you should arrange with your colocation provider to get an out of band serial connection to the system, and configure the console to go to the serial port. We provide that for free at $EMPLOYER and most other places I know of do it for free or nominal charge. I was not aware of that. Thanks for the suggestion. Paul Schmehl If it isn't already obvious, my opinions are my own and not those of my employer.
Re: console access
Andy Kosela wrote: Then you can even remotely mount iso images from your laptop at home directly on the server (very handy sometimes). Incidentally, when I tried to use a Supermicro IPMI card for networked remote media, FreeBSD boot loader crashed the machine (video went haywire and it didnt boot). The same thing happened when trying to use a USB CDROM drive, so I suspect USB boot support is at fault somehow. - Andrew ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: console access
On Sun, 8 Jun 2008, Andrew Snow wrote: > Andy Kosela wrote: > > Then you can even > > remotely mount iso images from your laptop at home directly on the > > server (very handy sometimes). > > Incidentally, when I tried to use a Supermicro IPMI card for > networked remote media, FreeBSD boot loader crashed the machine > (video went haywire and it didnt boot). > > The same thing happened when trying to use a USB CDROM drive, so I > suspect USB boot support is at fault somehow. Try a snapshot made after this commit.. http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/boot/i386/btx/btx/btx.S?rev=1.46;content-type=text%2Fx-cvsweb-markup (it was MFC'd to RELENG_6 & others on the 18th of March) -- Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from." -- Andrew Tanenbaum GPG Fingerprint - 5596 B766 97C0 0E94 4347 295E E593 DC20 7B3F CE8C signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: console access
On Sun, Jun 08, 2008 at 07:53:32PM +1000, Andrew Snow wrote: > Andy Kosela wrote: >> Then you can even >> remotely mount iso images from your laptop at home directly on the >> server (very handy sometimes). > > Incidentally, when I tried to use a Supermicro IPMI card for networked > remote media, FreeBSD boot loader crashed the machine (video went haywire > and it didnt boot). Supermicro IPMI cards are notoriously buggy. A few of the system engineers at Yahoo! who I know continually bitch and moan about how horrible they are. My advice: do not install the IPMI card which is causing your problems. Additionally, the IPMI card which "piggyback" on top of one of the onboard Ethernet ports are going to force the use of something called ASF (at least in Broadcom land it's called that), where the NIC then has two physical MAC addresses -- yes, you read that right! The OS has to have support for that feature for it to work properly, and your local LAN will probably freak out, ARP-wise. > The same thing happened when trying to use a USB CDROM drive, so I suspect > USB boot support is at fault somehow. Booting FreeBSD off of USB devices is known to be broken; see "BTX, boot2, and loader" section at the below URL: http://wiki.freebsd.org/JeremyChadwick/Commonly_reported_issues -- | Jeremy Chadwickjdc 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 | ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: console access
Jeremy Chadwick wrote: Supermicro IPMI cards are notoriously buggy. A few of the system engineers at Yahoo! who I know continually bitch and moan about how horrible they are. My advice: do not install the IPMI card which is causing your problems. The remote KVM control feature was an important requirement so the card is staying. Luckily it uses the Intel gigabit NIC which seems to work well in 7-STABLE, I have no complaints so far. Every feature works well except virtual media. Booting FreeBSD off of USB devices is known to be broken; see "BTX, boot2, and loader" section at the below URL: http://wiki.freebsd.org/JeremyChadwick/Commonly_reported_issues Thats interesting - I regularly use USB sticks to boot freebsd as its easier for installation on cluster machines/routers that lack CDROM drives. I've used it on, I think, half a dozen different motherboards/architectures and its worked well on all of them, the Supermicro box was the only broken one. Because virtual media emulates a USB device I'm pretty sure thats why it wasnt working - the USB problem, not a problem with the IPMI card. - Andrew ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: console access
On Sun, Jun 08, 2008 at 10:52:37PM +1000, Andrew Snow wrote:
> Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
>> Supermicro IPMI cards are notoriously buggy. A few of the system
>> engineers at Yahoo! who I know continually bitch and moan about how
>> horrible they are. My advice: do not install the IPMI card which is
>> causing your problems.
>
> The remote KVM control feature was an important requirement so the card is
> staying. Luckily it uses the Intel gigabit NIC which seems to work well in
> 7-STABLE, I have no complaints so far. Every feature works well except
> virtual media.
>
>> Booting FreeBSD off of USB devices is known to be broken; see "BTX,
>> boot2, and loader" section at the below URL:
>>
>> http://wiki.freebsd.org/JeremyChadwick/Commonly_reported_issues
>
> Thats interesting - I regularly use USB sticks to boot freebsd as its
> easier for installation on cluster machines/routers that lack CDROM drives.
> I've used it on, I think, half a dozen different
> motherboards/architectures and its worked well on all of them, the
> Supermicro box was the only broken one.
Okay, so then your original comment ("The same thing happened when
trying to use a USB CDROM drive, so I suspect USB boot support is at
fault somehow") might actually not be caused by FreeBSD at all? The
reason I say that:
> Because virtual media emulates a USB device I'm pretty sure thats why it
> wasnt working - the USB problem, not a problem with the IPMI card.
What Supermicro box is having USB booting problems?
I'm currently in a battle with Supermicro regarding the PDSMi+ not
properly booting certain models of USB flash drives:
http://koitsu.wordpress.com/2008/04/05/supermicro-pdsmi-bios-bugs/
http://koitsu.wordpress.com/2008/04/26/supermicro-pdsmi-bios-bugs-part-2/
Supermicro currently has both of my USB flash drives which I reported
(two different) problems with, and they have confirmed the bug, but are
"unsure what's causing it". The last time I heard from them was 3 weeks
ago, stating "we're still working on it". (I'd really like my USB
drives back..)
I would not be surprised if the same problem affected USB CDROMs.
--
| Jeremy Chadwickjdc 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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Re: console access
Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
Okay, so then your original comment ("The same thing happened when
trying to use a USB CDROM drive, so I suspect USB boot support is at
fault somehow") might actually not be caused by FreeBSD at all? The
reason I say that:
OK, good point. I didn't try any other OS, I just tried FreeBSD 6 and 7
off a USB CDROM drive, virtual media CDROM, and virtual media floppy,
both of which use USB emulation. I assumed that if I tried, say, a
Windows CD, it would just work because that's usually Supermicro's
target market.
What Supermicro box is having USB booting problems?
Its a rather new X7DWT motherboard (Intel 5400 chipset, Xeon CPU)
Good luck with getting your USB drives back :-)
- Andrew
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Re: console access
On Sun, 8 Jun 2008, Andrew Snow wrote: > Thats interesting - I regularly use USB sticks to boot freebsd as its > easier for installation on cluster machines/routers that lack CDROM > drives. I've used it on, I think, half a dozen different > motherboards/architectures and its worked well on all of them, the > Supermicro box was the only broken one. > > Because virtual media emulates a USB device I'm pretty sure thats why > it wasnt working - the USB problem, not a problem with the IPMI card. Lucky you, every system I've tried it on bar my Dell i8600 laptop failed to boot :) With the btx.S r1.46 commit I was much more successful though. -- Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from." -- Andrew Tanenbaum GPG Fingerprint - 5596 B766 97C0 0E94 4347 295E E593 DC20 7B3F CE8C signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: console access
Jeremy Chadwick wrote: On Sun, Jun 08, 2008 at 07:53:32PM +1000, Andrew Snow wrote: [...] Additionally, the IPMI card which "piggyback" on top of one of the onboard Ethernet ports are going to force the use of something called ASF (at least in Broadcom land it's called that), where the NIC then has two physical MAC addresses -- yes, you read that right! The OS has to have support for that feature for it to work properly, and your local LAN will probably freak out, ARP-wise. It would be nice to have it better documented in manpage for bge (I know hw.bge.allow_asf is mentioned, but the words does not make it clear to me). It took me a long time before I discovered that I need to add hw.bge.allow_asf="1" in to loader.conf. Since that my eLOM on Sun Fire X2100 M2 servers works nicely without any lockups (mentioned in manpage) The same thing happened when trying to use a USB CDROM drive, so I suspect USB boot support is at fault somehow. Booting FreeBSD off of USB devices is known to be broken; see "BTX, boot2, and loader" section at the below URL: http://wiki.freebsd.org/JeremyChadwick/Commonly_reported_issues I am using USB flashdisks with FreeBSD installer with GRUB on HW where older BTX failed. Miroslav Lachman ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: console access
--On June 8, 2008 7:53:32 PM +1000 Andrew Snow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Andy Kosela wrote: Then you can even remotely mount iso images from your laptop at home directly on the server (very handy sometimes). Incidentally, when I tried to use a Supermicro IPMI card for networked remote media, FreeBSD boot loader crashed the machine (video went haywire and it didnt boot). The same thing happened when trying to use a USB CDROM drive, so I suspect USB boot support is at fault somehow. Interesting. I have a umass USB drive that causes kernel panics during boot. The rest of the time it works fine. So, I unplug the USB cable to reboot, then plug it back in and mount the drive after I login. Paul Schmehl If it isn't already obvious, my opinions are my own and not those of my employer.
