console access

[Jo Rhett]

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