[syslinux] com32 ssh/telnet support?

[Ferenc Wagner]

Ryan McLean <pvtryan100 at googlemail.com> writes:

> Since we have so many child nodes I do not have enough SIPs to go
> around so if I need console access to a node

If your child nodes are not manageable servers (like ordinary PCs),
you are pretty much out of luck: you can't even power cycle them
remotely without hardware hacking.

Your next best bet is a serial concentrator.  Put multi-port serial
cards into the head nodes, and wire up the childs.  Yes, this is
double cabling.

Two-way network access to pxelinux would be somewhat complicated to
add, but an output only network console, like netconsole in Linux,
wouldn't be particularly hard.  Having a watchdog in the clients and
access to the tftp server could get you a long way with this.

> I was thinking ssh/telnet access to the PXELinux prompt would be nice

Indeed.

> as I could ssh to a node tell it to reboot and then connect to
> PXELinux via ssh/telnet allowing me to choose one of my menu
> items. Thus removing the need for the console access unless there
> was a serious problem that I couldn't solve via ssh.

You can achieve the same by changing the default menu item on the TFTP
server before rebooting the client.
-- 
Cheers,
Feri.