[Beowulf] Remote Console

[John Hearns]

On Wed, 2006-03-22 at 09:00 -0500, Luis Alejandro del Castillo Riley
wrote:
> Hi fellows i have 5 pcs one is my master computer and the others are
> the slaves machines i am trying to build a cluster and i am looking
> for a program can do a remote console
> or desktop from the master pc to the others but not using SSH.
> The whole idea is find a remplacement of a KVM switch.



If you want to use a serial console, you can enable Linux to use a
serial console (see the Linux HOWTO pages).
Then you can attach a serial lead to each of the serial connectors on
the rear of the PCs.
You then have several options:
manually connect the lead from your head node to each node you want to
'talk' to
use a Cyclades type terminal server
use a Cyclades-type multi-port serial card in your head node

If your five PCs support lights-out management cards you can get a
connection from the serial port over the LAN. For example, on Sun
service processors you can ssh to the SP and connect to the serial
console. Or via IPMI cards you can run Serial-Over-Lan


Two questions:
if you look at the BIOS settings on your PCs do you have an option to
re-direct the serial console?
Do your PCs have an option for an IPMI card (may be termed a BMC)