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January 7, 2004

Frustrating Day Battling Pinouts for Sun Servers

After yesterday's trouble with connecting servers to the console server I went back with a standard ethernet, rolled and crossover cable. I attempted every combination possible, using null-modem and DB9 adaptors after straight connections wouldn't get anything.

The closest I got was with a ethernet cable . . . was able to get the machine to spit out a few words mixed with some binary garbage onto the console, no keystrokes got through though.

Now I'm working through documents trying to better understand pinouts for Sun servers to see if I can actually come up with a theory on what cabling *should* work.

Interesting find in the Sun docs indicate that I need to build my own cable:

the serial port may also be connected to a serial console/terminal server, but may require a custom RJ45-RJ45 cable depending on the pinout of terminal server ports. The
pinout of the ALOM serial port is provided in the ALOM Online User
Guide. An alternative to creating a custom cable, is to create a chain
using the standard serial adapters and cables that come with the ALOM
server and the terminal server. This chain may need gender changers and
null-modem adapters included in the middle.
Another document explains that either I can buy a special adaptor or build the cable myself.

Posted by mike at January 7, 2004 9:08 PM

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