[ale] Running a hands off remote Linux installation

[Jim Lynch]

On 07/31/2012 11:38 AM, Michael H. Warfield wrote:
> On Tue, 2012-07-31 at 10:21 -0400, Jim Lynch wrote:
>> On 07/31/2012 09:45 AM, Matthew wrote:
>>> a PDU with power rebooter is what you need.
>> How does that solve the need to press the power button to power the
>> system back on when you've done a shutdown?
> Depending heavily on the system and the BIO, you may have 3 "Power
> Recovery" options when coming back from a power failure.
>
> * Power Off
> * Last State
> * Always Power On
>
> Sounds like you need option #3 if your system supports it.
It's an elderly ATX box (mini tower) that has a relatively new MB and PS.

Sounds like I'll have to test it.  It has that option.  My only concern 
is "how does the computer know the power is back?"  It's connected to a 
UPS, I shut it down orderly and power off and the power to the computer 
is never interrupted unless the UPS battery runs down.  I'd have to shut 
the UPS off too.
>
> Is this a rack mount server or are you sticking a desktop / tower system
> somewhere?
>
> Someone mentioned the AMT module.  That's the Intel Active Management
> Technology module.  A lot of modern rack mount equipment has these
> things but, most of the time, they haven't been enabled.  There's all
> kinds of gotcha's in setting them up securely for distant remote
> control, however, and it's generally recommended they be accessible only
> from the local network.
>
> Another option if your server doesn't have an AMT, and doesn't support
> the Always Power On BIO option, would be to drop a little firmware based
> device, like a cheap Linux based router or a Rasberry Pie or something,
> that doesn't need to be on backup but will recover when power recovers
> and can be connected to remotely.  Then you use it with Wake-On-Lan,
> which a tower or a rack server SHOULD support, especially if it has on
> MB network interfaces.
I'm surprised it doesn't have wake-on-lan.  Other systems I have here do.
> Power comes back on, you just connect into your
> little interface and use ether-wake to wake up your server.  Wake-On-Lan
> uses a non-routable packet so you have to have some sort of minimal live
> device on the local network to the interface that has Wake-On-Lan
> enabled.
>
> The little box could, if it has a serial port (or USB port that will
> take a serial dongle), double as a serial console for when you really
> get things hosed up.  :-P  You could get away under $100 that way.
>
> Another option is that some servers and BIOS support timed wakeups.
> You'll have to explore your BIOS for that and I've never played with it
> personally.
>
> OTOH...  If your box you want to remote doesn't even support Wake-On-Lan
> (which has to be enabled in the BIOS as well) you probably should look
> at a better box.  Champagne taste on a beer budget only goes so far.
If I hadn't just recently put this together, I'd agree.
>
> Regards,
> Mike
>   
>> Thanks,
>> Jim.
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