The console server rocks

Last fall we got a really cool terminal server from our generous friends at Cyclades. Oh, and super fancy powerstrips.

Do we use it a lot? Yes! Directly? No, rarely. Indirectly? All the time! In the past it was extra uncomfortable to change anything that could possibly be messed up in a way that'd bring the server down at a time where going to the datacenter would be inconvenient (say in the middle of the night or in the middle of the day with "real work" looming).

Tonight was one of those times where I used it directly. One of the servers had crashed with this message repeating over the "screen" (serial port).

rtc: lost some interrupts at 2048Hz.
rtc: lost some interrupts at 2048Hz.
rtc: lost some interrupts at 2048Hz.
rtc: lost some interrupts at 2048Hz.
rtc: lost some interrupts at 2048Hz.

What it means? I don't know. It's been doing it once or twice before over the last year. Ctrl-p and a "power cycle" command later the box was rebooting and back up. Whee. No datacenter visit for me. The people at IX2 (the datacenter) are great, but it's nicer not to go there too much; in particular at 3am. :-) (Yes, the datacenter people would have helped reboot it, but I'd rather not bother them and more importantly it's much better to be able to properly see what's going on before hitting the big button - virtual or otherwise).

Thanks Cyclades!