Conserver
Developer(s)Bryan Stansell
Stable release
8.2.7 / July 7, 2022 (2022-07-07)[1]
Repository
Operating systemCross-platform
PlatformUnix, Linux, Windows
TypeNetwork management Out-of-band management System administration
LicenseBSD
Websitewww.conserver.com Edit this on Wikidata

Conserver is a serial console management system that provides remote access to system consoles and logs to a central (master) host.[2] 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 LISA 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.[3] This forked into different versions (generally v8.<something>) used by Sun Microsystems, IBM, and numerous others. Bryan Stansell later merged the forks with most features and added TCP Wrapper access control, SSL 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 serial wired multi-port cards. Modern day setups (generally) use separate management Ethernet networks and console servers.[4] In some cases some form of reverse telnet or SSH connection is used; alternatively, an additional level of indirection can be interposed: the server provides a Serial over LAN 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,[5] as well as log the console output of virtual machines.

Conserver is generally used in computer cluster setups too, logging messages either via a terminal server[6] or with an instance running on every node monitoring the console of the next machine, known as daisy-chaining.[7][8]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Releases - conserver/conserver". Retrieved 5 October 2023 – via GitHub.
  2. ↑ "Conserver - Provides remote access to serial port consoles". fsf.org.
  3. ↑ Fine, Tom. "Console Server".
  4. ↑ "Article for the USENIX journal ;login". conserver.com. 2000.
  5. ↑ Small, Tim (2004). "Howto setup IPMI under Linux". Semantico.
  6. ↑ Ford, Egan (2003). "xCAT Terminal Server HOWTO". IBM. Archived from the original on 2007-10-10.
  7. ↑ Buchholtz, Charles (1994). "SUMMARY: switch to allow many machines to share one console". sunmanagers.org. Archived from the original on 2004-11-06. Retrieved 2007-06-02.
  8. ↑ Shishido, Clark (2003). "RE: Best serial console server construction?" (PDF). freebsd-hackers. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-05-19. Retrieved 2007-06-02.

Manual pages

Console Server and Adapter References

Other


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