Archive for July, 2007

Preppin’ Baby’s Room

Sunday, July 22nd, 2007

Never quit moving this whole weekend. Finally managed to dedicate the time, along with Jessie’s parents to get the baby’s rooms ready for the arrival.

Started at around 10:00 AM Saturday morning and did not stop until this evening…

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Fun with FreeBSD Serial Consoles

Thursday, July 12th, 2007

Like most whom are geeky enough to run a home server, I run my server headless (no keyboard or display attached). This is convenient 99% of the time (namely for everything excluding operating system upgrades or occasions where you firewall yourself out of your own machine while tweaking IPFW rules)…

Traditionally I avoided this problem via a PS/2 KVM switch between my server and desktop PC. That solution met it’s end when I ousted my last desktop PC. In order to continue with the KVM style setup I would need to find a KVM equipped with USB keyboard and mouse ports and both VGA and DVI display ports, which apparently is not easy to come by short of some very high end setups.

It seems more often then not, the old fashioned strategies yield the greatest success. I opted for a NULL Modem cable (1969 called, they want their RS-232 back) and a Keyspan USA-19HS USB to Serial adapter for the Mac Mini.

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