accessing shell when gnome locks up.

[Les Mikesell]

Tim wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-02-27 at 07:59 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote:
>> These days you'd be much more likely to have another computer or
>> laptop with an ethernet connector available than a serial terminal or
>> cable with the right-sized, right-gender ends.  If you don't have a
>> hub, use a crossover ethernet cable to connect and use ssh.  Or get
>> wireless working and forget about all that nonsense.
> 
> Can you use that sort of thing, though, for when debuggers would have
> been providing information out the serial port?  Or when you'd have been
> using a serial console managing bootup?

A lot of servers (at least IBM, Sun, Dell) these days do provide network 
access to the console with an extra management port.  If you have enough 
machines that it is a real issue you can get these models.  Otherwise 
you use a kvm or just plug in the monitor and keyboard when you need it 
(usb keyboards are good for that).  Places like Google probably don't 
even bother.  The time it takes to debug a broken machine on site costs 
more than replacing it.  I usually compromise, using  machines with 
swappable drives and try to revive them with a disk swap before giving up.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell at gmail.com