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From: Vivek Khera <vivek@khera.org>
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 10:43:52 -0500
To: freebsd-stable <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org>
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Subject: Re: 6.0 on Dell 1850 with DRAC4 management card?
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On Jan 6, 2006, at 9:47 AM, Marian Hettwer wrote:

> I don't know about the DRAC with FreeBSD, but I assume that the  
> BIOS of
> this Dell still supports BIOS redirection to serial port. If so,  
> you can
> have Monitor and Keyboard connected locally and use the serial console
> remote.
> Just get a small console server (depending on the amount of servers  
> you
> have remote), for instance an old cyclades TS. Connect them and you  
> can
> get on your serial port through the console server via ssh.

This is precisely what I do.  The cyclades work extremely well,  
except for one flaw: if you power cycle them they send a BREAK signal  
down every serial port.  So just make sure you don't have  
BREAK_TO_DEBUGGER enabled on your kernels and you're safe.  Otherwise  
expect every server to break to debugger on a power cycle of your  
cyclade.  Not that you need to ever reboot those little boxes, but  
you never know....

I've never enabled the DRAC card on any dell I have that came with  
them...