[Beowulf] KVM to a compute node - ssh

[Tim Small]

Jerker Nyberg wrote:

>>This seems to be an odd feature of some serial BIOSes (e.g. AMI) - they
>>don't support the VT100 codes for F11, F12, but instead you can use "Esc
>>1" to "Esc 0" for F1-F10, "Esc !" for F11, and "Esc @" for F12 (totally
>>unintuitive with my non-US keyboard with the @ symbol not on the "2"
>>key, but there you go...).
>>    
>>
>
>Wow! Thanks. *joyfully types ESC @ for boot selection* How did you
>figure this out?
>  
>
I eventually found it in some HP/Compaq documentation, after some
banging of my head against the wall when using a Proliant with HP's
serial BIOS - their version doesn't seem to  support function keys at
all, but does support the Esc-blah alternatives.  Quite why none of them
seem support F11/F12 is just one of those BIOS writers' mysteries, I
suppose ;o).

>>Mmm, Intel's SOL implementation is proprietory for these boards (SOL is
>>not part of IPMI v1.5) it may be however that it is close enough to the
>>spec published in IPMI v2.0 that SOL support in free utilities will work
>>with it, with, or without a bit of reverse engineering..  The most
>>annoying ommision IMHO is the inability to send a break - so no remote
>>sysrq functionality yet.
>>    
>>
>
>Ok.. It seems like it is possible to hack the kernel to change the SysRq
>key but I do not really like that since I prefer the prepackaged kernels.
>But that is no problem since it is possible to do a IPMI out-of-band
>reset.
>  
>
Yep, but you don't get to sync, or remount/ro the disks before
resetting...  Just to be clear, the IPMIv2 spec does include serial
break support, but the Intel dpccli tool doesn't..  There does seem to
be mention of a Sun tool which does SOL towards the bottom of this page:
http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hardware/docs/html/817-5249-10/chapter5.html

I'm tempted to have a look at that to see if it is any better than
dpccli, but haven't had time to yet..

Tim.