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Freedom9 freeView IP 100 IP KVM Switch Review

Tue, 04/24/2007 - 5:37pm — jhgoodwin

Test Setup #1

IBM xSeries 345

  • 2x2.8Ghz Xeon
  • 4GB RAM
  • 6x146.8GB HD
  • CD-ROM
  • Floppy
  • Single USB Port
  • CentOS 4.4

Experience

Mouse interaction w/ CentOS in KDE seemed erratic, similar to using the Remote Supervisor Adapter to access the RAID management tool from IBM. When I first used the freeView 100, it would not allow me to access any of the pre-boot screens using the keyboard or mouse. I think this was related to USB being used for the inputs, and not really well supported by the BIOS, since I had USB Legacy enabled and it didn't seem to be helping. However, later it "cleared up". I switched it to PS/2, and it worked well then too.

This server did not seem to be able to USB boot, but when I attached a USB -> IDE adapter and tried a Knoppix CD on a DVD drive I had, it didn't boot either, and none of the boot options had USB. I think on this one, I was just out of luck for that.

The USB device was detected by CentOS after booting though

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Comments

Wed, 05/30/2007 - 1:43pm — Anonymous (not verified)

on page 9, what does usb

on page 9, what does usb boot have to do with the kvm? what usb device was detected?
Mon, 09/07/2009 - 10:13pm — jhgoodwin

USB Boot using KVM

After noticing my comment queue had lots of spam, I looked back and saw your comment! Well, years late, I'd just like to say USB boot is for the KVM to be able to boot up the computer using a remote CD drive. Basically using the remote KVM software, you can mount an ISO image as though it was local to the device. This allows you to remotely reload the OS, or boot a rescue CD. I hope this makes sense. John