[ale] computer controlled power switches

[Jeff Lightner]

We don't have remote power resets but do have remote consoles (KVM) from
Raritan which has a web interface.  We can at least do "ctrl-alt-del"
via this over our VPN which lets us do the reboot 95% of the time.  On
rare occasion the system is hosed enough to require power cycle but it
is so rare on our Linux systems that I'd probably have a hard time
convincing my boss to buy it.  Console access however happens often
enough (e.g. for controlled reboots) that the Raritan setup has been
quite handy.  Of course we use this in the office as well to prevent
need for display with every server.

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
To: ale at ale.org
Christopher Fowler
Sent: Thursday, December 28, 2006 2:23 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [ale] computer controlled power switches

On Thu, 2006-12-28 at 14:14 -0500, Christopher Fowler wrote:
> Make one and let me know if it works!
> 
>
http://www.bolis.com/amillar/computers/hardware/serial-port-power-switch
> 

I emailed this before I read it :).  About 3 years ago we looked at a
similar idea to create a cheap one port power controller.  This design
is what we came up with.  The problem is that it requires DTR to be
active to turn on power.  This is great unless your PC is off.  If the
PC is off or rebooted then your device will be shut off.  We then
concluded that we needed some sort of processor to save state to that we
could tell the power control to turn off,on, or reboot the outlet.  It
would then need to save this state and keep it that way until we sent
another command.  



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