[NTLUG:Discuss] KVM for Linux

[Matt]

On Sun, 27 Mar 2005 15:05:17 -0600, Patrick R. Michaud
<pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 27, 2005 at 02:20:34PM -0600, Fred James wrote:
> > All
> > I have a situation that could be an excellent place to use a small KVM
> > switch, but I am not able (as yet) to determine if such would work in a
> > purely Linux environment.  Does anyone have any experience or advise
> > they could share?  Thank you in advance for any help you may be able to
> > offer.
> 
> Almost any KVM switch that doesn't require a (windows) software driver to
> be loaded should be able to work fine in a Linux environment.  I've used
> many such KVM switches in Linux environments without any real problems.
> 
> Well, I did have *one* problem:  one Belkin switch I had used the
> "Scroll Lock" key as the trigger to switch between ports on the KVM
> switch.  This was okay, except that pressing Scroll Lock could also
> temporarily suspend console messages, and when more than a buffer's worth of
> console messages (probably 4K chars) were generated with scroll lock
> activated, the result was a kernel panic.  The easy solution for this
> KVM switch was to change the console keymaps to ignore Scroll Lock.  :-)
> 
> However, this was 5-6 years ago, and newer KVM switches likely don't
> have this problem.
> 
> Pm
> 
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> 
I have a Belkin 4 port KVM and it works fine with Linux.  The scroll
lock has not been an issue since I have to hit it twice to switch to
the next box.  (At least not hat I have noticed so far).  The one nice
part of this switch is that it does have the button on the front so
that if you keep it in reach - the scroll lock issue just goes away  -
that is unless you get like me and when you are working on multiple
boxen you just start using the keyboard to switch.

M