Open Power Management Console 46
Scott Haugaard writes "There's a cool open code/open hardware power management device page has the schematics, programs, and pictures of a homebrew remote power console. Use this to cold boot those unresponsive servers remotely, or to shut them down at night via scripts and bring them up again before your users log on to save power. Solder, TCL, LEDs, wires galore. Manage power to 16 servers from two wires on a serial port."
Re:i must have an ear infucktion (Score:1)
Re:and on the 7th day (Score:1)
Re:i must have an ear infucktion (Score:1)
Re:May be useful (Score:1)
INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT CALIFORNIA..............
America has engaged in some finger wagging lately because California doesn't have enough electricity to meet its needs. The rest of the country (including George W. Bush's energy secretary Spencer Abraham, who wants Californians to suffer through blackouts as justification for drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) seems to be just fine with letting Californians dangle in the breeze without enough power to meet their needs. They laugh at Californians' frivolity.
Well, everybody. Here's how it really is:
California ranks 48th in the nation in power consumed per person.
If things don't change, the rest of the country will be hit, too. Trust me... it'll happen.
Re:My mother (Score:1)
I used that to allow remote power-cycling of the cable modem for a while, one day after it got wedged. It came in handy once or twice, but I yanked it out when I needed the module to control Christmas lights. :-) The modem hasn't glitched in a while anyway, and since I still haven't gotten dial-in working since switching from SuSE to LFS, there's really no way to control a remote cable-modem reset right now anyway. (Well, maybe nohup (br k8 off; sleep 5; br k8 on) & logout would work...)
Re:May be useful (Score:1)
...they'd still crash trying to figure out how to buy something for a dime, sell it for a nickel, and stay in business.
Well, everybody. Here's how it really is:
California ranks 48th in the nation in power consumed per person.
I've also noticed that CA's weather doesn't exactly suck. How does it rank once you take heating and cooling factors out of the equation?
Re:waiting for the open multiple console (Score:1)
http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/
Ok, so it's not quite what you want, but fufills the need for me.
APM on the motherboard (Score:1)
My computer already supports being turned on from three sources:
At 8.45a this morning my computer powered itself on because I set the BIOS up to turn it on at that time.
With regards to the second option, I can SSH into the server on the LAN beside my computer and send it a magic packet it wake it up.
As for turning it off ... I just have to click the right buttons and it will shut itself down.
I moderate this buzzword compliant piece of electronics -1 redundant.
X10 has _zero_ security (Score:1)
With the wireless modules, anybody driving past your house can power down your systems remotely. Not exactly a feature to be proud of...
waiting for the open multiple console (Score:1)
page.. (Score:1)
"Now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb."
Is it just my nearsightedness or (Score:1)
Re:Oh my GOD! Think of what this device does! (Score:1)
Some people like APC for this purpose, others favor the good folks at Western Telematic.
Western Telematic RPS switches can be chained for 1100 feet worth of rj-11, all nodes rebootable/killable individually or en masse at the flick of your Tk-perl control panel.
Huge telecoms have these devices strewn throughout their operations. Scary isn't it?
Re:Anyone use X10? (Score:1)
Oh, and yes, I know X10 offers zero security. I rely purely on security through obscurity in this case. I know that's not great, but hey, if someone starts screwing with my X10 stuff, I'll just ditch it and find a better solution.
Hey, that would save time (Score:1)
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page [cavalrypilot.com]
Roomie (Score:1)
Sorry, he's not open-source. =)
I love this idea (Score:1)
Think about it, you could set linux up to turn on your lamp or stereo when you want to get up in the morning, have coffee all ready by the time you're out of the shower, and have the toast just popping out as you finish your cup of coffee!
Hell, you could schedule your linux box to randomly turn on lights while you were on vacation to scare off intruders. If your box was networked, you could remotely turn stuff on and off from work.
Purchase some solenoids, and you could really have some fun.
Re:My mother (Score:1)
Not to mention that thing where she binds "washing your mouth with soap" to some choice regular expressions.
Bingo Foo
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Remote Rebooter (Score:1)
Re:X10 has _zero_ security (Score:1)
I wouldn't put any X10 stuff on my production systems, I have NOC monkeys that can push reset buttons for me.. That stuff is purely for fun... and they are fun to play with, may not be secure, but neither is my telephone or television, someone can walk by my house and broadcast propaganda on my TV(if I didn't have cable.;).
If I wanted a serious, secure, remote power control system, I'd go out and buy one, I wouldn't trust anything I built myself.
APC [apc.com] makes a good one, SNMP able and ready. I've used this on remote test stations and they work well. Expensive though.
Shut your servers down at night? (Score:1)
Whatever.
Re:May be useful (Score:1)
Yeah, so? California has the highest population of any state. Multiply population times power consumed per person. Want to take bets that California has the highest total power usage?
Think! - me.
Re:My mother (Score:1)
One of us is floating here (Score:1)
How I've missed Enoch Root (Score:1)
Re:My mother (Score:1)
I keep all my servers in the basement of my parent's house, and use my mother as the control mechanism
Heh, mine's under the stairs, and my girlfriend is my on-site admin. We're still at the "it's the little black picture with the green squiggle" stage. I like the sound files idea.
And I've just had a great idea for using an X10 [x10.com]. I could get a linux box to listen for keepalives from my (sorry) Win98 box on the LAN, and cycle the power on it whenever it hangs. Neato! ;)
Re:Is it just my nearsightedness or (Score:1)
--
What's with this? (Score:1)
My senses, as though an anteater I'd seen
(panic spreads and the audience half rise)
A nasty long-nosed brute
(screams from the audience)
With furry legs and sticky darting tongue
I seem to feel its cruel jaws
Crunch crunch there go my legs
Snap snap my thorax too
(various screaming women faint)
My head's in a twain, there goes my brain
Swallow, swallow, swallow, sluuuuuuuuuuurp
here, here... (Score:1)
Re:Let wardialers and FAXers cycle your UPS... (Score:1)
Is it just me, or are these diodes in backwords?
Re:Roomie (Score:2)
I bet he is if you get him drunk enough.
Re:Oh my GOD! Think of what this device does! (Score:2)
Oh yes... I used to work at a hospital where there were some machines which were considered medical equipment, and there had to be an emergency stop button for the whole room. This was situated just below the lightswitch...
Re:May be useful (Score:2)
I look forward to updates from this idea (Score:2)
Let wardialers and FAXers cycle your UPS... (Score:2)
I also have a problem with using diode strings to drop a supply voltage... I would definitely use an Honest to God Voltage Regulator with bypass caps (USD$2.50 vs $.10). I have actually blown-up chips in my face on a breadboard with this kind of kludge.
Who cold boots servers remotely anyway? I would call the cleaning crew in my building to have a live body in front of the machine before I would rely on this kind of thing.
Dennis
The right way to do this. APC (Score:3)
Something like the APC MasterSwitch [apcc.com], for about US$60/outlet [cdw.com].
Supports serial control, and has built-in ethernet with SNMP, HTTP, telnet access. You can assign individual usernames and passwords with access to any one or a group of outlets. SNMP traps on invalid passwords or SNMP community strings so you can detect hacking attempts.
Wire Up to the Wolfentstein "kill" front end (Score:3)
Re:Hey, that would save time (Score:3)
Anyone use X10? (Score:3)
I've been happy with my firecracker and there's tons of software [freshmeat.net] for it, open source and not. It's serial controlled, and wireless. no soldering, semi-expensive, but good nerd value.
Chicken shit disclaimer (Score:3)
Consider the situation that brought this about (Score:3)
This isn't meant as a webserver, that would obviously be a fool-hardy need. However, even in areas where power consumption isn't all that important, such as a small business that's only running the inter-office servers for twelve-hours a day, could still find this a useful tool. And, if you noticed, this allows you to decide what is shutdown, ergo, not necessarily shutting down the internet gateway for said small business. This also can restrict departmental use of power or systems...that falls under the stallman definition of tyrant/maniac, but I'm getting over it;-)
/. effect autodetection? (Score:4)
Oh, wait. A link from Slashdot shuts down your servers *anyway*.
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Evan
May be useful (Score:4)
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X10 and Misterhouse (Score:4)
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Oh my GOD! Think of what this device does! (Score:4)
Take a look at what this circuit really DOES. I examined the schematic, and having designed computer-driven power relays before, I think I have a good idea of what this circuit actually does. Think about this: it introduces a single-point failure node into the power supply of up to 16 computers. So now if this circuit fails, it can potentially take down a whole room full of systems. Or even worse, if a cracker gets into it, he can blow your systems away at will. I recently had the displeasure of having an old linux test box get cracked through the old FTP exploit, boy that skript kiddee enjoyed himself rebooting my system over and over, as I later determined from reading the logs.
Anyway, I used to build similar power relays, I just did the computer front end, and some expert electrics guys assembled the solenoid driven switching system. I worked at a stereo shop back in the mid-70s, they wanted to put all their demonstration stereos on relays, then have a computer turn them on and off, in preset configurations. So I got an Apple II with a Corvus 5Mb hard disk, I set up a UCSD Pascal system, and wrote a nice little program to browse through presets and create your own.
Now came the hard part. I set up 4 PSIO boards, which were these cool boards with 4 parallel ports each. So I had 64 bits of parallel I/O, so I could control 32 L/R stereo powered audio channels.
On the audio side, the electrics guy wired up a series of 64 switchable solenoids capable of carrying about 500watts of power each, but were capable of being triggered by the low voltage of a parallel port signal. One bit per relay. I just wrote 1s or 0s to the port, and the relays all triggered to their new state, on or off. Hit the whole array with 0s to turn everything off, 1s to turn them on. The electrics guy wired the whole thing up with thick copper Monster Cable, and there were plenty of worries over grounding, which was way beyond my abilities, but solved by the application of thick braided cables. I didn't want to go anywhere near that assembly, since it was hooked up to high-powered stereo equipment, like Phase Linear 400s, a few assorted tube amps, etc. These guys were demonstrating high-end audiofile stuff, and the speakers were the real key. They wanted to be able to switch different amplifiers to different arrays of stereo speakers. You could turn the relays on or off in pairs, or leave 2, 4, or more pairs of speakers on to listen to them in parallel. And there's where the problem started.
I discovered that my conceptually clean idea of the relays going on and off in a crisp square wave transition was not reality. The relays took longer to close than to open. The switch bounced closed and took a moment to stabilize. We didn't realize this when we first started playing with it, and every time they tried to switch settings, it blew up the audio amps (and they were mighty peeved at blowing expensive PA400 amps!). We had to pull everything out, run a test signal through the relays and look at the output on an oscilloscope, where we discovered that if we switched amp relays, there was a brief period where both settings were open, causing the amps and speakers to run parallel, short circuiting everything and melting it all down in one huge imploding glumph. Ooops!
So I had to rewrite all the Pascal switching routines in 6502 assembly language. I could keep the user interface, and just pass the switching preset strings to the ASM routine. The program turned off all the relays at once, then ran a short ASM delay loop, then wrote the new switch presets. Whew, that was a bitch, I had to time both the relays's switch performance as well as the ASM delay loops on the oscilloscope, and got everything timed out perfectly. But it was pretty dicey there for a while.
So you see why I'm skeptical about power management through computer controlled relay systems. IMHO, it's like setting up a rack of servers connected to a light switch on the wall, and there's a security guard standing by it who is only supposed to allow authorized users to flip the switch. Except he's probably just as likely to bump the damn switch and blow out the whole server farm.
My mother (Score:5)
"Hullo, mum? Is the server making noise?"
"Um, yes. I think."
"Is it the Barenaked Ladies."
"No...it sounds like Johnny Cash."
"Is it 'Johnny Yuma?'"
"No, that one about the car. 'One piece at a time.'"
"Okay, that means the switch is dead. You need to jab a pencil into the little grey box with the red triangle on it."
"Do you mean the one with the big sign that says 'don't touch?'"
"No, the one with the red triangle."
She's still easier to work with than BiznessOnline.com.