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Project Hydra: the USB Multiheaded Monster

Jul 05, 2004  By Poul E. J. Petersen
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You have a bunch of servers to administer, not enough consoles and a small budget. Roll your own serial console server with USB.

Resources

Linux USB Device Database: www.qbik.ch/usb/devices

Linux USB FAQ: www.linux-usb.org/FAQ.html

PC Weasel: www.realweasel.com

The Remote Serial Console HOWTO: www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Remote-Serial-Console-HOWTO/index.html

Poul Petersen (petersp@alleft.com) has been working with Linux since about the first release of Slackware. Since then, Linux has permeated his desktop, laptop, living room, home Beowulf cluster and even his car. In the daytime, he pays the electricity bill by working as a senior UNIX system administrator for Rogue Wave Software.

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modern motherboards seem to

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 05/07/2006 - 05:30.

modern motherboards seem to have multiple controllers, 1 port per controller or in the worst case 2 ports per controller. this could be further extended with pci cards.

furthermore you could use multiport usb-to-serial converters that provide 2,4 or 8 serial ports on a single usb device. At some point usb bandwidth may limit your system - the converters quite often require several usb transactions for a single-byte transfer.

there is a more serious limitation in the older linux kernels, like those you mention - all usb-to-serial converters share the same major device number, thus limiting number of accessible converters to 256. current kernels solve this entire mess with udev where rules are used to name the devices by location in the device tree or by the serial number, which may be available on FTDI converters, for example.

USB To USB Console

AdamG's picture
Submitted by AdamG (not verified) on Wed, 04/06/2005 - 19:12.

Since the linux kernel can not support console redirection to USB.

I was wondering if it would be possible to go straight from usb to usb without the need for the serial to usb convertor.

Has anybody tried this?

Adam

I would like to know as

porter's picture
Submitted by porter (not verified) on Mon, 01/16/2006 - 01:20.

I would like to know as well. I will designing a new production environment for my company. We will have 20+ linux systems. We probably are going to use some type of kvm setup for a few machines. I would much rather have a many to one USB system giving me console access to all machines from on central computer. Isn't there some mechanism already build into linux that will give us this functionality?

Re: Project Hydra: the USB Multiheaded Monster

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 07/09/2004 - 02:00.

I'm a month behind in my LJ, but last month's issue had an article what might help fix the naming problems by using udev in newer kernels. (>= 2.5)

Kernel Korner - udev--Persistent Device Naming in User Space

Re: Project Hydra: the USB Multiheaded Monster

faheyd's picture
Submitted by faheyd (not verified) on Wed, 07/07/2004 - 02:00.

This article is exactly the reason why I read Linux Journal every month. Actually seeing someone doing something with all the tools linux gives you is most satisfying. My hats off to Poul!!!!

Re: Project Hydra: the USB Multiheaded Monster

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 07/11/2004 - 02:00.

can you provide your source for "Maxxtro adapters based on the pl2303 chip for about $15 each". I went looking for that on froogle/google and managed to land a heap of sites in .ru, which I'm not in the mood to buy from, really.

TIA.

Re: Project Hydra: the USB Multiheaded Monster

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 08/09/2004 - 02:00.

http://www.callcct.com/s.nl/c.328257/sc.2/category.94/it.A/id.382/.f

Is this really cost effective?

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 07/05/2004 - 02:00.

Let's just say that the serial adapters are only going to cost us $25.00 each, and let's say we are only going to do 16 ports. For the $400 we are going to spend, it might be cheaper to get a used terminal server (16 or 32 ports) for the same price and have a dedicated hardware device.

Personally I am using the lantrontix series products and have several doing all my serial consoles.

Re: Is this really cost effective?

petersp's picture
Submitted by petersp (not verified) on Tue, 07/06/2004 - 02:00.

I think so. First, it seems a little unfair to compare used prices of lantronix hardware to "new" USB hardware prices. The list price of a 16-port lantronix is roughly $2,200 new (though admitedly you could beat that by shopping around a little). And the condition that you will only purchase used hardware can create a deficit when you need a new terminal right away. That is, the ease of extensibility of using USB means that I can drive down the street and spend $40 and have enough hardware to hook up the two new machines we just received; The hardware is common and available everywhere and I don't have to buy a 16-port server for two new machines. Also, the prices quoted in this article are not the best you can do. I have on occassion spotted good 7-port USB hubs for $12, and 4-port hubs for $5.

Finally, there is a hidden value. This solution is all open. You can do other things with it, like monitor UPS, control other serial devices, etc. It's completely flexible. One of the things I've been working on lately is using our old "useless" laptops as remote consoles. All of the virtual terminals are sessions back on the main console server, so we can have as many "heads" spread around the server room as we like, and we can move them to any location with a network port without having to log in twice...

Of course, the lantronix units provide a nice clean solution. One of the drawbacks of using USB for serial consoles is that you can end up with a "spiderweb" of cables. So if you're planning a new rack of 32 servers and you've got the money then a lantronix unit is a great solution. But if you've got a server room like ours with every different kind of UNIX hardware imaginable and non-rackable cases spread all over the place, you might find that the flexibility of using a USB solution is desireable.

-poul

Re: Is this really cost effective?

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 08/18/2004 - 02:00.

Poul has too many computers.

-makisupa

Re: Project Hydra: the USB Multiheaded Monster

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 07/03/2004 - 02:00.

ohh yes, great article - thanks a lot for sharing poul.

Re: Project Hydra: the USB Multiheaded Monster

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 07/03/2004 - 02:00.

First off: great article! I'll be trying this out... Thanks.

About the software redirection: one of the kewl things bootloaders can do is give serial-console access. Hence, an option to pass parameters to the OS kernel before bootstraping (boot into initrd.img on ramdisk, and (try to) fix stuff from there) .

In Linux, to /etc/lilo.conf add "serial = 0,9600n8"
In OpenBSD, to /etc/boot.conf add "set tty com0"

(All? Others have such an option also - hell one might be able to use Linux or even FreeDOS as a bootloader/rescue for NT :-)).

Better yet, some mobos seem to be supported by LinuxBIOS:
http://www.linuxbios.org/status/index.html

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