
Pilo: Raspberry Pi-Powered Lights-Out Remote Server Management - gilad
https://zach.bloomqu.ist/blog/2020/08/pilo-raspberry-pi-lights-out-management.html
======
oarsinsync
Similar concept (TinyPilot) discussed in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23927380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23927380)
(and v2 at
[https://tinypilotkvm.com/blog/v2-design](https://tinypilotkvm.com/blog/v2-design))

~~~
tyingq
This one is particularly interesting because they spent the time to
drastically improve the latency of the remote video.

I'm interested if anyone has applied the same concept to vga capture instead
of HDMI. A lot of servers only have vga available.

~~~
orev
VGA capture has been solved for a long time by readily available products. You
can get multi-port or single port units like the Lantronix Spyder. For the
most part, HDMI has not had much of a solution. I suspect it’s because of the
copy protection enforced by media companies combined with most sever companies
moving to fully built-in management interfaces (e.g. IPMI, DRAC, etc.)

~~~
tyingq
Well, by similar, I meant sub $20 and already outputs motion jpeg. That as a
single unit, for vga, doesn't exist as far as I can see.

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Normal_gaussian
A few things to note about the video capture device:

\- it hardware encodes to MJPEG at some ok but not great quality. Text becomes
somewhat fuzzy but readable.

\- a version with HDMI passthrough is available. It also has an extra
_optional_ power supply (micro usb) which is useful if you chain a dozen to
one pi zero.

\- the usb only ones can be as low as £5 on ebay ($6.55) and £10 for
passthrough.

\- it featured in an artcile by Micael Lynch which featured here on HN, where
he explored the latency involved with such video caprure devices
([https://mtlynch.io/tinypilot/](https://mtlynch.io/tinypilot/))

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blensor
If you are already using and arduino, couldn't you the use it as a HID device
and send the keyboard (not sure if it does mouse as well) directly without
going through a PS/2 emulation?

~~~
flotwig
Looks like it's not supported on the Nano, Trinket, or Uno, which were the
only devices I had laying around:
[https://arduino.stackexchange.com/a/39638](https://arduino.stackexchange.com/a/39638)

Otherwise, that would work fine, but not all motherboards support power-on via
USB HID, most support PS/2 though.

~~~
ThatPlayer
You can do it on the Uno, if it's real (or close enough) Uno that uses an
atmega16u2 for the USB connection. Using HoodLoader2 like that post mentions:
[https://github.com/NicoHood/HoodLoader2](https://github.com/NicoHood/HoodLoader2)
.

Most Uno clones skip the atmega16u2 and use a cheap USB to serial adapter
instead, which will not let you reprogram it as a USB HID

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woliveirajr
> IBM was using the PS/2 standard (not to be confused with the PS2) to connect
> mice and keyboards to PCs

Oh my. I would never expect someone taking PS/2 for PS2. It made me wonder
that many communication problems that I have with some of my team is caused
because I'm a bit dated...

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myself248
Notably, you don't need a relay for the RESET pin. Since the Pi and the mobo
already share a ground courtesy of the PS/2 connection, you can just tie the
RESET line to a GPIO pin and leave it floating (configured as an input, high-
impedance state) when you don't need to reset the motherboard. When you do,
configure it as an output and set it low, which pulls the signal to ground and
places the mobo into reset. A moment later, turn it back to an input and the
mobo's pullup raises the line and the chips come out of reset.

If you're feeling extra cautious, use a small FET and raise the gate to pull
the pin low. More details in my other comment here.

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xuhu
If you give up the video capture part, a smart plug and a Raspberry Pi that
can send Wake on Lan packets and can act as an SSH gateway should work,
without extra parts. My beige Linux boxes currently use a $20 8-port switch
and a Pi that's reachable via port forwarding.

~~~
myself248
Alternately, repurpose a wake-on-lan NIC as a reset-on-lan trigger:
[https://www.i3detroit.org/reset-on-lan-an-ethernet-aware-
rem...](https://www.i3detroit.org/reset-on-lan-an-ethernet-aware-remote-
reboot-device-from-junkbox-parts/)

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SahAssar
So the original problem was the disk decryption password, but now instead you
have a internet accessible serial console?

Seems to me like it would be better to keep the sensitive info on a separate
encrypted partition/disk and let the server boot unencrypted so you can ssh in
and unlock the sensitive data.

This solution would probably be harder to maintain and secure than a more
straightforward solution to the original problem.

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fanatic2pope
When the last story came out I picked up one of those cheap HDMI capture
devices on ebay to play around with and could not get it to work on Linux. I
think there are different firmware versions of this device floating around and
only some of them can be made to work reliably.

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1MachineElf
Very impressive project, and I'm especially grateful for a detailed example of
ps2dev. I was looking at ps2dev last year, wondering what it would take to
create a PS/2 input device.

