From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Apr 21 10:51:31 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id KAA12088 for hackers-outgoing; Fri, 21 Apr 1995 10:51:31 -0700 Received: from netcom7.netcom.com (bakul@netcom7.netcom.com [192.100.81.115]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with ESMTP id KAA12082 for ; Fri, 21 Apr 1995 10:51:27 -0700 Received: from localhost by netcom7.netcom.com (8.6.12/Netcom) id KAA11862; Fri, 21 Apr 1995 10:42:28 -0700 Message-Id: <199504211742.KAA11862@netcom7.netcom.com> To: Joe Greco cc: bde@zeta.org.au (Bruce Evans), wilko@yedi.iaf.nl, hackers@freefall.cdrom.com, pritc003@maroon.tc.umn.edu, rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com, terry@cs.weber.edu Subject: Re: [DEVFS] your opinions sought! In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 21 Apr 95 11:12:12 CDT." <9504211612.AA12681@brasil.moneng.mei.com> Date: Fri, 21 Apr 95 10:42:23 -0700 From: Bakul Shah Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > Those of us running unattended production systems cannot afford to have a > machine crash into ddb, and not reboot. Otherwise, I'd agree... but right > now, I have to drive a half hour to go reboot systems that lock. Aren't there gizmos that hookup to the reset button on one side and have an RS232 connection on the other side? You have to type some magic sequence to make them do the reset. You hook up the serial connection to another machine that you can access over the net (with appropriate security measures). I have used this with SGI systems but don't know if this was a custom built device or not. Sorry, I don't have any ready references to give you but this'd be a piece of cake with a miniboard (a really nifty 6811 based controller that is very popular with the robotics crowd). Another possibility is to use a BSD X-10 CP290, which sends X-10 commands over power lines to a module that will turn on / off anything connected to it. You probably don't want to power cycle your computer so you'd have to hookup a 110V relay to the reset button. --bakul