Looking for specific KVM-ish hardware

[MultimediaMan]

Yes, he's going to need a Monitor and Keyboard in that case. Now, it wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility to gut an old laptop and use ONLY the Monitor, keyboard and possibly, the mouse... Most laptop bags can accomodate 2 machines....in this case, one could be considerably lighter than the other.

[Wombat]

Originally posted by MultimediaMan
Yes, he's going to need a Monitor and Keyboard in that case. Now, it wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility to gut an old laptop and use ONLY the Monitor, keyboard and possibly, the mouse

It might be possible, but it's bloody unlikely. Getting a laptop shell that can somehow take in a VGA feed to drive its LCD.....

[agallag]

Originally posted by dZeus
what's wrong with my proposed solution? (other than requiring loads of external stuff)

I think it would require less stuff to carry a small LCD and a portable keyboard with integrated mouse.

[agallag]

Originally posted by Wombat
It might be possible, but it's bloody unlikely. Getting a laptop shell that can somehow take in a VGA feed to drive its LCD.....

And that's certainly a lot more effort than he wants to put into this

[VJ]

Well, the only way I see has been partially proposed: connect the laptop via serial port & network, use serial terminal direction for the bootup process, once it has booted move over to a networking software remote control...

But: what is he booting? If it is only a text-console on the server, it could well be that the serial direction stays open... (not sure about this though)

edit : just found this link: http://www.bigwebmaster.com/General/...OWTO/bios.html


Jörg

[MultimediaMan]

VJ, most BIOS that support Console Redirection have it prominently noted in the BIOS under Advanced Chipset Configuration.

If agallag's friend is working with Linux/Unix (a good possibility), it should be noted that not all flavors of Unix will tolerate the console (even if it is a hyperterminal on a serial port) being removed while the system is operational.

[VJ]

True...
I don't have that much experience with keeping the serial link after boot.
Either way, it would be a start (server boots a text-console; after this you either use remote control software, or have an X-server on the computer that has the serial terminal, and launch programs to that X-server - could be a security issue to allow root to have applications show up on a remote Xserver though, but they would still be launched from the console so it might be possible).


Jörg