non video console output

[Mark J. Dulcey]

Stephen Adler wrote:
> Guys,
> 
> I want to setup a system for my basement servers such that I can monitor 
> the console output from my desktop in my office on the second floor of 
> my house. Basically some way of attaching to the console output through 
> some kind of TCP/IP protocol. One way I did this in a job way back, was 
> to get a terminal server which I could telnet to, and each port 
> connected to a different serial port on the terminal server. I then 
> hooked up the serial port to each one of the serial outputs of our 
> servers. This was in the day when you hooked up a vt200 to the serial 
> port of the system which served as the console. What's the modern day 
> equivalent? For example, all those super computers made up of 1000's of 
> linux PC nodes, how do they monitor their console outputs?

With KVMs that work over TCP/IP. Google "TCP/IP KVM" for lots of info; 
here are a couple of links:

http://www.avocent.com/What-is-KVM-over-IP.aspx 
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/power/en/ps3q02_avocent?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

That's assuming you even need console output at all, rather than 
controlling the servers via ssh or remote X. You only need the console 
occasionally, so I have found those zero-cost methods to be enough for 
my needs; on the rare occasion I actually need to touch the console I 
just go to the basement and do it.