Remote Reboot Options

Hi all

A client wants to be able to remotely reboot her
Redhat web server from her Windows notebook. She
says it hangs up every 3-5 months or so, usually
on the weekend (of course). I set up the server a
while ago and it's been good otherwise. I don't
want to open up the firewall for telnet access, so
I am thinking of SSH access via a SSH Windows
telnet client like PuTTY.

The client is not very technical and I'm wondering
if there are other options. I'm also contemplating
avoiding direct server access altogether and putting
in a hardware reboot system via one of those smart
switches. The simpler, the safer, the better. Any
thoughts or tips on things known to work would be
quite appreciated.

-BC

On 7 Nov 2004 17:53:38 -0800, BC wrote:
> Hi all
>
> A client wants to be able to remotely reboot her
> Redhat web server from her Windows notebook. She
> says it hangs up every 3-5 months or so, usually
> on the weekend (of course). I set up the server a
> while ago and it's been good otherwise. I don't
> want to open up the firewall for telnet access, so
> I am thinking of SSH access via a SSH Windows
> telnet client like PuTTY.

Should not be a problem to allow ssh from selected ip addresses.

BC wrote:

> I am thinking of SSH access via a SSH Windows
> telnet client like PuTTY.
>
> The client is not very technical and I'm wondering
> if there are other options.

I don't know of another way, besides the hardware switch option you
mentioned. Using SSH, you could set up an alias for the user that invoked
"sudo reboot & exit", to make it easier.

If your user can handle the key generation process, you can set up her
public key on the server to invoke the proper reboot command. After the
initial added complexity of creating a key pair, however, she never has to
log in with a password (if the key is created with no password), and is
never faced with a command prompt. The reboot command will run as soon as
she connects, and then the connection will immediately close.

Jeffrey

In comp.os.linux.misc BC <(E-Mail Removed)>:
> Hi all

> A client wants to be able to remotely reboot her
> Redhat web server from her Windows notebook. She
> says it hangs up every 3-5 months or so, usually
> on the weekend (of course). I set up the server a
> while ago and it's been good otherwise. I don't
> want to open up the firewall for telnet access, so
> I am thinking of SSH access via a SSH Windows
> telnet client like PuTTY.

Ssh should be fine, just setup sudo. On the other hand this
doesn't happen without a reason. Linux doesn't hang/crash every
3-5 month. I'd investigate in solving the problem, might just be
some crappy old distro kernel ('uname -a') with known bugs or hw
related.

Good luck

[..]

--
Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
mail: echo (E-Mail Removed) | perl -pe 'y/a-z/n-za-m/'
#bofh excuse 287: Telecommunications is downshifting.

Michael Heiming <michael+(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<u3i362-(E-Mail Removed)>...
> In comp.os.linux.misc BC <(E-Mail Removed)>:
> > Hi all
>
> > A client wants to be able to remotely reboot her
> > Redhat web server from her Windows notebook. She
> > says it hangs up every 3-5 months or so, usually
> > on the weekend (of course). I set up the server a
> > while ago and it's been good otherwise. I don't
> > want to open up the firewall for telnet access, so
> > I am thinking of SSH access via a SSH Windows
> > telnet client like PuTTY.
>
> Ssh should be fine, just setup sudo. On the other hand this
> doesn't happen without a reason. Linux doesn't hang/crash every
> 3-5 month. I'd investigate in solving the problem, might just be
> some crappy old distro kernel ('uname -a') with known bugs or hw
> related.
>
> Good luck
>
> [..]

Thanks guys. I don't know how much I should check into
the 3-5 month hangup issue -- since it happens mostly,
if not only on weekends, I'm suspecting it's from noise
either at the electrical end or at the network end
generated by weekend construction projects, which there
have been a lot of. They are also a public library tied
in both to a town system and a separate library network
system. There haven't been hard freeze-ups, though, so....

-BC

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.os.linux.networking.]
On 2004-11-08, BC <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> A client wants to be able to remotely reboot her
> Redhat web server from her Windows notebook.

APC sells "remotely managed power switch", they allow any machine to
be remotely rebooted, even if it's not responding at all.

Davide

--
Windows gives you a nice view of clouds so you can't see any potentially
useful boot time messages.
-- Bill Hay on alt.sysadmin.recovery

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.os.linux.misc.]

Hi.

BC <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> Hi all
>
> A client wants to be able to remotely reboot her
> Redhat web server from her Windows notebook. She
> says it hangs up every 3-5 months or so, usually
> on the weekend (of course). I set up the server a
> while ago and it's been good otherwise. I don't
> want to open up the firewall for telnet access, so
> I am thinking of SSH access via a SSH Windows
> telnet client like PuTTY.

What does "hang" mean in this context? If it really locks up in a way
that makes it inaccessible from the network, SSH will not do you any
good. If SSH does work, then I assume that some other network service
ceases to respond. In this case, it shouldn't be necessary to reboot.
Find out what it is, and restart it. Better yet, find out why it craps
and fix it.

> The client is not very technical and I'm wondering
> if there are other options. I'm also contemplating
> avoiding direct server access altogether and putting
> in a hardware reboot system via one of those smart
> switches. The simpler, the safer, the better. Any
> thoughts or tips on things known to work would be
> quite appreciated.

This would seem to be the only workable solution if the system really
locks up so that it is no longer accessible remotely.

Cheers

Seb

(E-Mail Removed) (BC) wrote in message news:<(E-Mail Removed). com>...

> says it hangs up every 3-5 months or so, usually
> on the weekend (of course).

> The client is not very technical and I'm wondering
> if there are other options.

There is always cron. If it fails no more often than 3 to 5 months
then simply do a cron script to reboot the machine every 2 months.
Perhaps 2 am on the first Saturday of even numbered months? Who says
it will
answer the Telnet or SSH if it is "hung". If only the web server is
"hung"
why bother to reboot. Just use cron to restart the web server on some
appropriate schedule.

Regards...Dan.

On 7 Nov 2004 17:53:38 -0800, BC <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> Hi all
>
> A client wants to be able to remotely reboot her
> Redhat web server from her Windows notebook. She
> says it hangs up every 3-5 months or so, usually
> on the weekend (of course). I set up the server a
> while ago and it's been good otherwise. I don't
> want to open up the firewall for telnet access, so
> I am thinking of SSH access via a SSH Windows
> telnet client like PuTTY.
>
> The client is not very technical and I'm wondering
> if there are other options. I'm also contemplating
> avoiding direct server access altogether and putting
> in a hardware reboot system via one of those smart
> switches. The simpler, the safer, the better. Any
> thoughts or tips on things known to work would be
> quite appreciated.

The kernel can be configured for either a hardware watchdog card or
software watchdog. See kernel config docs for more info.

As far as remotely rebooting from the shell, the commandline needs to end
with "&" or the reboot may be cancelled when the remote connection is
terminated. So I usually do "shutdown -r +1 &", then disconnect (normally
I only do that after a kernel update).

PuTTY works fine with keys (I am currently using an imported OpenSSH key),
but I do not know if I would use a key without a passphrase, because if
anyone gets the private key, they can use it without any passphrase.

(E-Mail Removed) (Dan Skinner) wrote in message news:<(E-Mail Removed). com>...
> (E-Mail Removed) (BC) wrote in message news:<(E-Mail Removed). com>...
>
> > says it hangs up every 3-5 months or so, usually
> > on the weekend (of course).
>
> > The client is not very technical and I'm wondering
> > if there are other options.
>
> There is always cron. If it fails no more often than 3 to 5 months
> then simply do a cron script to reboot the machine every 2 months.
> Perhaps 2 am on the first Saturday of even numbered months? Who says
> it will
> answer the Telnet or SSH if it is "hung". If only the web server is
> "hung"
> why bother to reboot. Just use cron to restart the web server on some
> appropriate schedule.
>
> Regards...Dan.


Hmmm....

I actually kind of like this idea. It'll be like putting
in a regularly schedule reboot in a Windows server except
for a, um, slightly longer interval. And very simple to
try out.

Linux has been a very stable OS, but I still miss the
Netware days when servers would run so long without any
maintenance whatsoever that people would actually forget
what that PC in the closet was for. My biggest concern
then was with hard drives not starting up after being
allowed to cool down (stiction) after having been on
continuously for years. Everytime I have to patch/reboot
a &*$%# Windows server these days....

This is off-thread, but I'm looking at evaluating some
of that Linux stuff Netware now owns. Have any of you
had good/bad experiences with them? I'm mostly interested
in Exchange Server replacements. I've had good luck with
the Bynari IMAP groupware connector, but I'm curious
about things like OpenExchange Server and the like.

Thanks again for all the good ideas.

-BC