Re: Using serial console as a poor mans IP kvm?

[Jarle Aase <jgaa@jgaa.com>]

Hi,

I was just about to order some usb2serial hardware when I read this. 
Your suggestion will give fewer "moving parts" and is actually very 
simple to implement. I will loose the ability to do a cold boot, but it 
will probably not matter too much in my case, at least not for now.

I'll try it when I get the first server assembled. Thanks a lot!

Jarle

Den 09. sep. 2016 10:31, skrev tomas@tuxteam.de:
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> On Thu, Sep 08, 2016 at 10:26:59PM +0300, Jarle Aase wrote:
> > I want to set up a few servers at home. Unfortunately, as I live in
> > Bulgaria at the moment, the electric power is gone pretty often for
> > longer periods than my UPS'es can deal with. So my servers will have
> > to be started at least a few times every quarter.
> [...]
>
> > That means that I need to reboot the servers relatively often, and
> > provide the luks passwords every time. Some times I am far away when
> > this happens [...]
> An interesting alternative to the serial console thing is baking
> in an SSH server into the initramfs. There are small SSH servers
> built for that, like Dropbear.
>
> Upside is that you don't need any additional hardware and it's
> pretty well integrated into Debian. Downside is that you need
> BIOS, the bootloader and initramfs working (with the serial you
> at least get a chance to fix the bootloader remotely).
>
> https://packages.debian.org/sid/dropbear-initramfs
> https://wiki.debian.org/RescueInitramfs
> https://projectgus.com/2013/05/encrypted-rootfs-over-ssh-with-debian-wheezy/
>
> Might be worth a try.
>
> Regards
> - -- t
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