Are there any reprocussions to leaving the consoles unplugged on HP L & N Class machines? We are cramped for space in the server room and we are thinking about unplugging all the console/terminals and only keeping one terminal to plug in when we need to log in directly on a box.
I did a small test - I unplugged the terminal and plugged it back in while the server was running. It recognized the terminal fine after plugging it back in. Then I unplugged the terminal and rebooted the server. It rebooted fine with no errors in the rc.log. But once I plugged the terminal back in after the reboot all of the messages from the reboot started scrolling on the screen like they had been saved in a buffer and were now being output to the screen. Obviously, my concern is that this buffer might fill up and cause problems if the consoles/terminals are unplugged for a long period of time.
I guess that 'buffer' will not last long since I did reboot a L class many times without console, plug it back (for some reason) and did not get any output other than the login prompt!
Agree with andryk. We had a couple of out of service N class systems that we used for testing and those almost never had any consoles. We would just plugin a laptop through a serial cable.
gonzotonka, your experience of seeing the bootup messages when you reconnected your terminal is odd. Normally, the characters are sent down the connecter. If a terminal is present, they are displayed, and if no terminal is there, they just disappear. It sounds like your console port is somehow using hardware flow control so it needs CTS or DTR raised before it will transmit. If this is the case you might have a problem. Run "yes|nl" on the console. Unplug the console for an hour and see if it hangs or continues running.