User`s guide

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Opengear Application Note: SDTConnector + Dell Page 5 of 14
Enable your operating system's console on the PowerEdge
In order to access your operating system using SOL, you must tell it to run a console on the serial port when the OS starts.
For Windows 2003 Server:
 Use the bootcfg command to start Emergency Administration Services (EMS) on the serial port
 From a command prompt (Start -> Run -> cmd.exe), type:
bootcfg /ems ON /port COM1 /baud 19200 /id 1
This enables EMS if you only have one Windows operating system installed, or for the first operating system in the
Windows boot menu. Otherwise use /id 2 for the second operating system, /id 3 for the third, and so on
This also assumes that you are using the first serial port (COM1) as per the step Enabling console redirection in the BIOS
 Reboot your system to enable console redirection.
(Emergency Administration Services (EMS) and the Special Administration Console (SAC) are discussed at length in articles
available at Microsoft's MSDN site.)
For Linux:
This process is detailed in the document entitled "Enabling Serial Port Console Redirection on Linux-based Dell Servers"
published in Dell Power Solutions magazine, and available at the Dell web site.
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/power/en/ps1q03_stanton?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz
Warning: It is not recommended you rely solely on this document to complete this step. The following is an example only to give
you an example of what is involved. Following these steps verbatim may render your system unable to boot. So refer to the Dell
documentation and your Linux distribution's documentation for a more thorough guide.
 Configure your bootloader to redirect to the serial port. Using GRUB, you would add the following lines to the top of your
grub.conf or menu.lst file:
serial --unit=0 --speed=19200
terminal --timeout=10 console serial
 Find the entry for the kernel image you are using, and add the kernel options: console=tty0 console=ttyS0,19200, e.g.:
title Linux
root (hdx,x)
kernel /vmzlinux-x.y.z ro root=/dev/hdxx console=ttyS0 console=tty0
This also assumes that you are using the first serial port (/dev/ttyS0) as per the step Enabling console redirection in the
BIOS
 Modify the boot scripts to automatically spawn a login prompt on the serial port once Linux has booted. This varies from
distribution to distribution. You may be able to add the following line to the top of /etc/inittab:
0:12345:/sbin/agetty ttyS0 19200
 Also ensure ttyS0 is listed in /etc/securetty to allow root to login through the serial console.
 Reboot your system to enable console redirection.
Configuring the Opengear SSH gateway to permit SOL