Access to conserver machine's own console?

Hi,

 

I was wondering if it's possible to use conserver to get access to the console of the machine which is itself running conserver?  And if so, how do you do it?  I don't see this mentioned in any documentation or FAQ - sorry if it's there & I missed it.

 

Consider a linux system with a single serial port which is defined as the kernel's serial console.  Some software starts an interactive application during start-up, which displays and accepts input on the serial console.  I would like to enable network access to the serial console so that it's possible to interact with this application over the network.

 

I was hoping to run conserver to enable network access to localhost's serial tty which is running a getty:

 

[root@jimockers-rh72-1 conserver.cf]# grep ttyS1 /etc/inittab
s1:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 9600 ttyS1 vt100

[root@jimockers-rh72-1 conserver.cf]# cat /etc/console/conserver.cf
console simple { master localhost; type exec; rw *; }

access * {
        trusted 127.0.0.1;
}

console tty {
        master localhost;
        type device;
        device /dev/ttyS1;
        baud 9600;
        parity none;
        rw *;
}

Of course this does not work because conserver gets an I/O error (as does agetty) when trying to wrestle for control of the port.

 

What can I do to enable remote network access to the conserver's serial console?

 

Thanks,

Jim

 

P.S. The motherboard has only one serial port and we can't add more hardware.  Otherwise I would install a null-modem jumper between the two serial ports and use conserver's access to one to log into the other.  Oh well.

 

--
Jim Ockers, P.Eng. (jim.ockers@pason.com)
Contact info: http://www.ockers.ca/pason.html

PS Sorry about mime/html email - I'm unable to turn it off just now.