Conserver is a serial console management system that provides remote access to system consoles and logs to a central (master) host. It supports both local and network serial connections and allows replay of the server console history even if the server is down. Multiple users can connect to a single serial connection, with one having write-access.

History

"Console server" as it was originally known, was written by Tom Fine, and was presented with source code to the world at large during

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IV, in Colorado Springs in 1990. A similar program had previously been written at Purdue University. Those authors assumed that Fine's code was based on their version, so forked Fine's code, modified it and released it as version 8. This forked into different versions (generally v8.) used by

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, IBM, and numerous others. Bryan Stansell later merged the forks with most features and added

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access control,

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encryption, UDS networking and PAM authentication support; as well as accepting patches submitted by others.

Modern usage

The conserver was written to be used with

RS-232 In telecommunications, RS-232 or Recommended Standard 232 is a standard originally introduced in 1960 for serial communication transmission of data. It formally defines signals connecting between a ''DTE'' (''data terminal equipment'') such a ...

serial wired multi-port cards. Modern day setups (generally) use separate management

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

networks and console servers. In some cases some form of reverse telnet or

SSH The Secure Shell Protocol (SSH) is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. Its most notable applications are remote login and command-line execution. SSH applications are based on a ...

connection is used; alternatively, an additional level of indirection can be interposed: the server provides a

Serial over LAN Serial over LAN (SOL) is a mechanism that enables the input and output of the serial port of a managed system to be redirected over IP. Details On some managed systems, notably blade server systems, the serial ports on the managed computers are ...

service via IPMI, and a command-line utility connects to the server. This socket can then be used as a "virtual reverse telnet" connection. conserver is not limited to any one form of network protocol, and can handle these setups, as well as log the console output of

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardw ...

s. Conserver is generally used in

computer cluster A computer cluster is a set of computers that work together so that they can be viewed as a single system. Unlike grid computers, computer clusters have each node set to perform the same task, controlled and scheduled by software. The comp ...

setups too, logging messages either via a terminal server or with an instance running on every node monitoring the console of the next machine, known as daisy-chaining.

References

External links

Manual pages

* * *

Console Server and Adapter References

Zonker's Greater Scroll of Console Knowledge

Other

Improving server management with Minicom and conserver
by Paul Virijevich September 6, 2006
Tip of the Trade: Conserver
by Carla Schroder May 8, 2007
Lights Out Management
by hcoyote on Thu, 2006-11-09 Free network management software Out-of-band management Windows administration Linux software Unix software {{Unix-stub