From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Mar 23 10:09:09 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 234E716A4CE for ; Tue, 23 Mar 2004 10:09:09 -0800 (PST) Received: from mxfep02.bredband.com (mxfep02.bredband.com [195.54.107.73]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6116F43D31 for ; Tue, 23 Mar 2004 10:09:08 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from peter.schuller@infidyne.com) Received: from thunderbolt.scode.org ([213.113.221.115] [213.113.221.115]) by mxfep02.bredband.com with ESMTP <20040323180904.ZUTA17363.mxfep02.bredband.com@thunderbolt.scode.org>; Tue, 23 Mar 2004 19:09:04 +0100 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by thunderbolt.scode.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D27A411FA71; Tue, 23 Mar 2004 19:09:08 +0100 (CET) From: Peter Schuller To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 19:09:08 +0100 User-Agent: KMail/1.6 References: <405FC8A6.5040708@users.sourceforge.net> <1080024938.670.25.camel@ovirt.dyndns.ws> <20040323084201.F80307@gabby.gsicomp.on.ca> In-Reply-To: <20040323084201.F80307@gabby.gsicomp.on.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <200403231909.08496.peter.schuller@infidyne.com> cc: Matthew Emmerton cc: ste@smxy.org Subject: Re: disconnecting keyboard: big trouble !?! X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 18:09:09 -0000 Hello, sorry for butting in late here, but this keyboard plugging issue has been a pet peeve of mine for quite a while. > But of course, the best solution to this whole hot-plugging issue is this: > > BUY ANOTHER KEYBOARD OR MOUSE. > > What you would rather do? Buy a $20 keyboard/mouse or a $150+ > motherboard? > > Heck, you can buy cheap 4-port KVMs for under $200 these days too. That argument just doesn't hold in home environments or low-budget colo environments. Myself and pretty much everyone I know have a habit of unplugging and plugging keyboards freely and have done so for years and a multitude of machines, and so far I have never ever heard of it causing hardware problems. The reality is that it is *extremely* annoying when you need physical console access and find yourself dead in the water because apparently the keyboard was disconnected during boot. Whether that is because of some cabling issue, a lack of keyboards, or something else isn't important - it can easily happen at home. And it may very well lead to some database corruption (or what-have-you) if you are forced to do an unclean shutdown. In a colo situation it can be much worse. In order to remedy the situation you need a digital KVM switch since an analog switch is essentially emulating plugging/unplugging quickly rather than acting as an active keyboard for each machine it is connected to. Not only can such a switch cost more than $200 (at least the ones I've seen) - they can also break (which happened to the one and only digital KVM switch I have ever used), and they waste precious rack space. And even with a KVM switch the flexibility of being able to re-arrange cabling is quite useful. Serial redirection is not always an option in a low-budget environment such as personal colo boxes where you try to really press the costs. How many low-budget motherboards have you seen that support console redirection? Not many I would guess. In short - it may seem like a trival problem but it's helluva annoying and can easily lead to serious problems both at home and in colocation environments. I'm very surprised FreeBSD doesn't handle this by default out of the box. -- / Peter Schuller, InfiDyne Technologies HB PGP userID: 0xE9758B7D or 'Peter Schuller ' Key retrieval: Send an E-Mail to getpgpkey@scode.org E-Mail: peter.schuller@infidyne.com Web: http://www.scode.org