[H-GEN] using one monitor with 2 pc's

[Troy Piggins]

* Robert Brockway <rbrockway at opentrend.net> :
> 
> On Mon, 31 Oct 2005, Ronald Bradford wrote:
> 
> > Have you considered just doing a VNC to the second machine from
> > the first machine, giving you all the functionality with a
> > single keyboard,mouse,monitor and not additional expense.
> > -K-I-S-S-
> 
> Troy noted that he uses ssh to access the boxes.  What he is after
> is something to use when the network is not accessible.  This is a
> "necessary evil" of running boxes that are accessed almost
> exclusively over the network.

Correct.  VNC would not solve it for me.  (I was going to reply to
Ronald direct  but got sick of reformatting the top post ;-) ).

> The rest of my post is aimed primarily at Troy,
> 
> KVMs have been discussed at length.  They are a good solution but
> they can be relatively expensive when all the cables are added in.
> 
> As an alternative I suggest investigating serial consoles.  For
> most PCs this gives access to everything except the BIOS.  Some
> PCs even allow access to the BIOS via the serial console.

Hmm, you're the second to recommend this.  Maybe I should
investigate further.

> You can run a dedicated "console server" or you can have the two
> boxes act as console for each other.  As long as one is on the
> network the console of the other is available.  If you want to
> consider going down this path the list can discuss the security
> implications further.

Ok - I'll look into it and get back if I like it for my application.

-- 
Troy Piggins
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