On Monday 26 February 2007 00:05, Ryan Moszynski wrote:
can a machine running linuxbios be remotely reset/reboot from crashed/frozen state over a network connection?
If you want an ultra-cheap solution to this and you have a NIC with external Wakeup-on-LAN (WoL) connector (such as the old Intel EtherExpress Pro), you can connect the WoL signal (via a transistor and a few resistors) to the mobo reset switch.
You send the WoL ethernet frame and the machine reboots, independent of any BIOS or software state.
Its probably not such a good idea for production environments, but in my experience it does work very nicely. The cost (per machine) is probably ~£1 +10--20 minutes of time building the unit and install it. In fact, it was cheaper to replace the NICs (for ones with external WoL connectors) that to use external signalling device.
The electronics should be safe: I believe a properly made Reset-on-LAN will not damage a machine; but, needless to say, you do this at your own risk!
I'm putting together a page together describing this in more details. I can post the details here, if people want.
HTH,
Paul.