SUMMARY: lights-out management

[Vic Engle <sunmanager@summerseas.com>]

Thanks to the following individuals for their excellent input:

Scott Croft, Mike Kercher, Will Backman, devnull, D Stimits, Seth
Rothenberg, Bob Vickers, Simon McCartney, Martin Schmitt, Andre Renaud
and Klaasjan Brand.

I needed to find a way to run xdm so as to allow xdmcp logins but NOT
run a graphical login on the console.

The answer was to edit the /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf file and comment out
the lines for starting an xdm on the local display :0. After that you
can either reboot or simply find the xdm and associated X session for
the console and kill the processes. That seems to work for me. The
procedure would obviously be slightly different if kdm is being used
instead of gdm as the graphical X login manager.

There were some questions as to why I'm even running at run level 5. The
problem is that in our environment, we have developers and DBAs who need
to log in to the server and run X apps, for example the DBAs need to run
the oracle universal installer, which is a java app. They all work on
windows platforms and use Xwin-32 or reflectionX to login to the servers
via xdmcp so to support that I think I need to run in run level 5.

One reply questioned whether the remote console would work enough to at
least ctrl/alt-F1 to a text login terminal. That was a great idea but
unfortunately didn't work.

Here is a snippet of the gdm.conf file showing the lines which were
commented out.

[servers]
#0=/usr/bin/X11/X
#1=/usr/bin/X11/X
#Note: If you want to make sure X runs on a specific virtual console on
linux,
#      you can use the following (for console 7):
#0=/usr/bin/X11/X vt7

During the next month we are going to be comparing performance and
functionality of the Linux/Oracle/DL580 platform with a
Solaris/Oracle/V880 platform. If there is interest I would be happy to
post results here.



Thanks for all the replies!

Vic Engle
Unix Systems Administrator
Duke Clinical Research

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Here is the original question

Hello List,

We are currently testing with a proliant DL580, quad xeons and 16gb.
We've installed RHAS and oracle9i and we're evaluating the platform as
an alternative to SUN boxes. One thing that has always been important to
us is lights-out management so we're looking at the integrated
lights-out feature of the DL580, called ilo. The ilo allows us to
connect to the box via https and remotely manage it. We can log into the
console or power off and on the box and actually interact with the
various bios features during boot up.

Heres the problem. The standard licensed integrated ilo doesn't support
a graphical console so if the box is in run level 5, I can't get into
the console to login. If I go down to the datacenter and do "ctrl/alt
F1" to put the display on a virtual terminal with a text login I can
then use the ilo remote console. Unfortunately, I have to run an xdm on
the box and allow xdmcp logins. Is there a way to boot to run level 5
but have the console display only text mode?

A work around would be to purchase an advanced ilo license from HP which
does support a graphical console but an alternative would be great.

Thanks,
Vic Engle
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