On Sat, Jun 06, 1998 at 08:58:59PM -0400, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> You mention laptops, which probably don't have an easy way to disconnect
> the keyboard (unless perhaps it's an IBM ThinkPad), but for 99% of other
> situations I think it makes more sense to probe for a keyboard, and if
> none is found then assume that a specified serial port will be the
> console.  It should not matter if there's a terminal attached at the
> moment, or not, and any RS232 console worth its salt will have 6+8+20
> wired back so that it appears as a local terminal and there'll be no way
> to "sense" if there's anything "listening".

Agreed.  We need to use a "serial switch" to access the consoles of several
NetBSD servers remotely.  If some server crashes and reboots, there will be
nobody typing any chars into the console serial port at that moment, but
we _still_ want the console to be accessible through serial port when some-
one needs it.  The machines can be anywhere, often there's nobody there to
plug in a keyboard and a monitor..

  -jm