Redowl.net

This site will continue to change its skin until I can come to an acceptable aesthetic arrangement.

It’s IPv6 Day. Are you on the 6Bone?

Recently, I bought a used WTI SCM-16 to console into my remote server. It was a steal for $60, considering it normally would have retailed for over $1000. It’s currently discontinued, but the vendor’s replacement (TSM-24) costs just under $1,300.

The first step was resetting its configuration. Using one of my home servers running FreeBSD (8.2-RELEASE) which was old enough to still have a DB9 (male) RS232 port, I downloaded Minicom from ports (comms/minicom), and connected the null modem cable (DB9 F/F) from the PC to port 1 (marked “Setup”) on the back of the SCM.

Minicom was configured to match the SCM’s default serial port settings: 9600 bps, 8N1 with hardware flow control (RTS / CTS).

Once consoled in using the system default account (super/super), a new super user was created and the system default was deleted. As you can see below, this box seems to have resided in Savvis out of their data center in New Jersey.

The rest of the configuration of the WTI was straightforward using the SCM-16 guide. The main issues were to replace the default super user account with a new one, disable telnet and confirm ssh was enabled. The same credentials were used for ssh access. Next, was to configure one of the 3-16 ports for the remote server. By default this range of ports disallows access to the SCM’s configuration mode (i.e. set to “passive”). Although in the pic below, port 4 was already modified. Afterwards, the box would then reside on a subnet other than the main server.

All in all, a good investment to be had for inexpensive out-of-band access.

This is the latest overhaul of my site since its inception in 1999.