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Date:      Sun, 23 Dec 2001 18:32:50 +0000
From:      Josh Paetzel <friar_josh@webwarrior.net>
To:        Lord Raiden <raiden23@netzero.net>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: BSD emergency shutdown of all servers
Message-ID:  <20011223183250.E237@twincat.vladsempire.net>
In-Reply-To: <4.2.0.58.20011223163417.0097c610@pop.netzero.net>; from raiden23@netzero.net on Sun, Dec 23, 2001 at 04:44:57PM -0500
References:  <4.2.0.58.20011223163417.0097c610@pop.netzero.net>

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On Sun, Dec 23, 2001 at 04:44:57PM -0500, Lord Raiden wrote:
> 	How would you go about doing an emergency shutdown of all of your BSD 
> servers say if something were happening that all of your servers HAD to be 
> shut down in 2 minutes or less regardless.  SSH'ing to all the boxes at the 
> same time would be kinda impossible in that limited time.  I'm more looking 
> at the old "Panic Button" idea.
> 
> 	The idea came to me today and I thought it would be very useful.  I don't 
> see a need for it right in the foreseeable future, but then again, I didn't 
> see the need for a UPS either until one of my boxes got whacked by a power 
> surge.  So as a little preventative forethought, I want something that can 
> remotely shut down all of our BSD servers within a 2 minute window so that 
> we can go power off at exactly 2 minutes and put the whole NOC dark within 
> 120 seconds of the "Panic Alert" so to speak.  Plus being able to execute 
> all of this from a basic script would be great too.  Kinda a single option 
> to execute thing.  The less things I have to do in that 2 minute panic 
> window, the better.
> 
> 	One use I can see for this is if severe weather was approaching and we 
> suddenly got an evacuation warning (say a tornado was coming or something) 
> then that 2 minute panic shutdown would be priceless.  Now if the NOC got 
> annihilated by a tornado that would be kinda a pointless exercise, but 
> under other circumstances I can see where that would be a good thing.
> 
> 	I'm also wanting this to be able to be done through an account other than 
> ROOT.  One that I can assign the option to only be able to execute 3 basic 
> panic commands.  One of them being the "shutdown -h now" command.  The 
> other two might be things like if we were being hacked I could fire that 
> off to the server(s) in question and shut down all access to them till we 
> could get rid of the hacker, or track him down and report him.
> 
> 	Again, I know this is a lengthy question, but I wanted to be as clear as I 
> could.  Thanks in advance.  I hope this gives you something to think about 
> too.  I'm also working on a solution for the NT/2k portion of our network.  :)

There are a couple of things that you could do.  One might be a script 
that you can run that automagically ssh's into all the machines and 
shuts them down.  Another might be the "big red switch" option.  They 
were in vogue for a while as something you could either telnet or dial 
into and physically cut the power to your machines.

Josh


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