OT: It's arrived!

[Simon Cozens]

Lyle - CosmicPerl.com wrote:
>  Remote serial port access? This is new to me. To be honest access the
> BIOS, etc, through a serial port is new to me. If you'd give me the
> terms I can google to research this I'd very much appreciate it.

As others have mentioned, you need a sysadmin. But since you're not going
to take mine or any others' advice, for the sake of posterity and list
archives, pretty much any half-decent data center will allow you to ssh
into a console server and talk to your machine's serial line. Similarly
they should provide you with a remote power switching facility.

My server (I *do* have the dual curse of equal incompetence in both
programming and sysadminning) is not a hot-shot Sun thingy, nor does it
have one of the new-fangled service processors - it's a Tyan S2099 - but it
just has an option in the BIOS to send the BIOS console to the serial port.

It also has a handy seven-segment LED which tells you where it's up to in
the boot process if it *really* falls over and can't get up.

-- 
The Second Law of Thermodynamics:
	If you think things are in a mess now, just wait!