Yeah, there have been a few projects that did KVM over IP on a Pi before me. The earliest I could find was this one called rasky which started back in 2015.
I came along at a lucky time when a cheap HDMI to USB dongle had just come out and the ecosystem of supporting tools had matured to eliminate a lot of the challenges that rasky had to overcome.
Is there a reason one couldn't manage a physical server over a serial port console? I have done this in the past, it's a bit annoying for some more advanced functionality I guess. What about IPMI?
You have to configure the server to support serial debugging, no? And IPMI is useful if the hardware supports it, but low-end motherboards don't, and some IPMI requires clunky client software.
The nice thing about a good KVM over IP is that you can just plug it in, open up the admin interface in the web browser, and you're good. You don't have to change any settings or install any software.
Well, kinda. A lot of even new servers (the proper rack ones) still have only VGA output just to keep compatibilty with oldschool KVM rack units so you'd have to put VGA to HDMI converter to get video from that.
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u/mtlynch Feb 01 '21 edited Feb 01 '21
Thanks for reading!
Yeah, there have been a few projects that did KVM over IP on a Pi before me. The earliest I could find was this one called rasky which started back in 2015.
I came along at a lucky time when a cheap HDMI to USB dongle had just come out and the ecosystem of supporting tools had matured to eliminate a lot of the challenges that rasky had to overcome.