The story of how to get from the Mac to the RMM server module, but not without Windows
The strange combination of circumstances forced me to make a decision today, from the category of things simple but incompatible, which I want to tell you about. As usual, I will start from afar, there will be a lot of thoughts, small reflections and completely microscopic distractions, so that those who wish will have a wonderful opportunity to become imbued with the spirit of history and simultaneously think about their own. The story will be about the server, and about Windows and Mac OS, about admin days and holidays, and even (some) about Java.
First, a little about the banal. We all know that servers usually do not stand side by side, say, under the table, and if the server suddenly stopped responding, it’s not possible to see “what’s up on the monitor?” No, I do not rule out the situation that the server you have is under your desk and serves office mail or 1C, if so, then perhaps you (for now) do not need the wonders of remote access, and the usual wired KVM easily solves your problems, when you suddenly have to look at the blue / black (select to your liking) screen. Servers in our world most often stand in data centers, where access to “see”, if not severely restricted by all sorts of access systems, is at least inconvenient because the data center is usually lucky on the other side of the city. Don't hurt every crash. But…
But, civilization has invented a sufficient number of ways to somehow reach out to non-nearby servers. Immediately exclude the gift of clairvoyance, telekinesis and other isotherism, as well as communication with the hoster's technical support: “can you connect KVM to server 555? No free? Will it be free in three hours? And we have the same vote, help, well ... ". Well, actually, and so on. Many who keep the server on the pads, and not in such a situation still fell. But no, progress will save us all the same: there are more “ideologically correct” remote control methods that completely eliminate the human factor. But there is only hope for themselves ...
Once I quietly connected servers with COM ports "criss-cross" and they wonderfully allowed us to manage each other. The BIOS could redirect the output to the console, the OS itself after loading, too, and since the entire exchange was completely textual, they lived, they did not know any ills. The main thing was not to print the file for a couple of megs, and then 115,000 baud is still not the most productive connection. But all this is wonderful because it allowed us not to go to data centers when firewalls got lost, ports fell off and evil dosas came. Resetly server managed by IP rosette and here, too, there was no problem. You want - BIOS reconfigure, you want to load in a single user, you could even repair the reyds.
')
But ... Remember, maybe, especially the "glamorous" BIOSes on 386-486 machines, which were controlled by the mouse and worked in graphical mode? I thought I would never see that again. Not here it was! In the next new servers turned out to be a RAID controller BIOS ... just a graphic one and with a mouse! I would never understand the logic of adaptek engineers, but the console turned out to be more unsuitable. The picture of the ideal world was completely spoiled. But here, in the study of all sovstvuyuschego server economy was and found our first today's hero. It turned out to be a handkerchief the size of a passport photo, with an RJ-45 connector, called RMM, which means Remote Management Module, a “remote management module.” It is inserted into the server, connected to the motherboard, and in addition to purely KVM cases: capturing images from the screen, emulating a USB mouse and keyboard, can mount CD / DVDs, flash drives, make the notorious Reset, and even turn off and on (!) The machine . Everything was done with the help of a straightforward web interface and a Java application working via Web Start. The solution was so perfect that I even became the server to put on the site "bare" and put everything remotely. In general, he lived-not-tugil, until the second protagonist of this story appeared.
I must say, I love small laptops, such that they work autonomously for a long time and do not take off their shoulders in the bag. Server nasty things often happen at the most inopportune moment, no one will argue. Well, from wearing a small laptop purely for reinsurance, to creative work on the shore of a lake or, for example, the roof of a house, it did not take a long life path. As a result, I already did not imagine myself without him at this moment. For a long time I was accompanied by small asusy, Sonya and even netbook-acer, with Winda on board, periodically replaced on a console-friendly Linux ... Not so long ago I had a MacBook Air 11 "in my bag, which also has everything in order with mobility and all the necessary software is there, and it works very smartly, and still the factor of the experiment didn’t affect at the same time. And I became an “apple”.
New life with a new laptop, as you might have guessed, I enjoyed exactly until the moment something terrible happened and I climbed through RMM to the server. Logged in, launched the application ... and got a suspiciously black screen. Stochastic keystrokes did not fix absolutely nothing. With the server it was bad, but it could not be so bad! As luck would have it, there was no other computer nearby, and I was cursing at the site. And, collecting the raid that was scattered there, I set out to find out that it had let me down so much. And then there was the news for the news, one more fun the other.
At first, there was Google, from which it became clear that perverts admining from the server’s MacBook via RMM are just a couple of people, all waiting for an answer to the question “how about?”. I agree, if you think that I am not the strictest follower of the Puritan IT-morals, but the solution is still found.
Remember i mentioned java? That was the first thing I sinned about. What did the old javist do? That's right, I went to java.sun.com for an update, and I learned there that Java is built into the OS and is not installed separately! (The noise was about 10 years ago, but everything was already forgotten!) And that I already have the latest Java, 1.6. But not for long, and there were enthusiasts offering ready-made assemblies of previous versions. In the case went 1.5 and 1.4. And JRE, and JDK. Both 32-and 64-bit. The result did not differ much, except that with some of them nothing started at all. Thoughts went in the direction of the virtual machine with Ubuntu or something more compact (128 Gig total, hard something!). For some reason, I simply did not want to install a virtual one.
From virtualization, I somehow quickly moved on to emulation options. Looking in the direction of fink, I also quickly broke off, he did not put his packages with Java, but hooked to the system ones. It seems that Linux-like Java cannot be inserted ... Stooop! And there are still windows! And there with the emulation everything is not bad - there is Wine and Winebottler, and Crossover! How would you just attach Java to a local browser? .. When the thought came to mind, I laughed, yes, I still laugh at that, it didn't work out as elegant as it could be, but everything turned out!
Crossover became the savior, this is a commercial version of Wine, but I don’t exclude that Winebottler could also save the day. Putting just Java would be a good theoretical exercise, and I simplified my usability a bit by putting Firefox first. It’s not supported directly from the Crossover installation profiles, however, without being something monstrous, I got up without problems. During its installation, I created a “bottle” based on Windows XP (it’s like a working system image of the Windows environment, there may be many for different programs). And then I put the JRE for Windows in the same “bottle” just by downloading it from this Firefox and launching it. The only option with the “online” installation did not work, refusing to open a vital URL for itself, but the “offline” installer worked without problems. Then everything went like clockwork: Firefox easily went into the RMM web interface, the Java application started with the emulated Web Start, and I got a long-awaited screen:
Perhaps the meaning of this, not the shortest story, is that in the modern variety of software solutions, you can always find your “explosive mix”, which will allow you to make friends with the incompatible, initially favorite interface and your favorite laptop. Even without resorting to virtualization.
First, a little about the banal. We all know that servers usually do not stand side by side, say, under the table, and if the server suddenly stopped responding, it’s not possible to see “what’s up on the monitor?” No, I do not rule out the situation that the server you have is under your desk and serves office mail or 1C, if so, then perhaps you (for now) do not need the wonders of remote access, and the usual wired KVM easily solves your problems, when you suddenly have to look at the blue / black (select to your liking) screen. Servers in our world most often stand in data centers, where access to “see”, if not severely restricted by all sorts of access systems, is at least inconvenient because the data center is usually lucky on the other side of the city. Don't hurt every crash. But…
But, civilization has invented a sufficient number of ways to somehow reach out to non-nearby servers. Immediately exclude the gift of clairvoyance, telekinesis and other isotherism, as well as communication with the hoster's technical support: “can you connect KVM to server 555? No free? Will it be free in three hours? And we have the same vote, help, well ... ". Well, actually, and so on. Many who keep the server on the pads, and not in such a situation still fell. But no, progress will save us all the same: there are more “ideologically correct” remote control methods that completely eliminate the human factor. But there is only hope for themselves ...
Once I quietly connected servers with COM ports "criss-cross" and they wonderfully allowed us to manage each other. The BIOS could redirect the output to the console, the OS itself after loading, too, and since the entire exchange was completely textual, they lived, they did not know any ills. The main thing was not to print the file for a couple of megs, and then 115,000 baud is still not the most productive connection. But all this is wonderful because it allowed us not to go to data centers when firewalls got lost, ports fell off and evil dosas came. Resetly server managed by IP rosette and here, too, there was no problem. You want - BIOS reconfigure, you want to load in a single user, you could even repair the reyds.
')
But ... Remember, maybe, especially the "glamorous" BIOSes on 386-486 machines, which were controlled by the mouse and worked in graphical mode? I thought I would never see that again. Not here it was! In the next new servers turned out to be a RAID controller BIOS ... just a graphic one and with a mouse! I would never understand the logic of adaptek engineers, but the console turned out to be more unsuitable. The picture of the ideal world was completely spoiled. But here, in the study of all sovstvuyuschego server economy was and found our first today's hero. It turned out to be a handkerchief the size of a passport photo, with an RJ-45 connector, called RMM, which means Remote Management Module, a “remote management module.” It is inserted into the server, connected to the motherboard, and in addition to purely KVM cases: capturing images from the screen, emulating a USB mouse and keyboard, can mount CD / DVDs, flash drives, make the notorious Reset, and even turn off and on (!) The machine . Everything was done with the help of a straightforward web interface and a Java application working via Web Start. The solution was so perfect that I even became the server to put on the site "bare" and put everything remotely. In general, he lived-not-tugil, until the second protagonist of this story appeared.
I must say, I love small laptops, such that they work autonomously for a long time and do not take off their shoulders in the bag. Server nasty things often happen at the most inopportune moment, no one will argue. Well, from wearing a small laptop purely for reinsurance, to creative work on the shore of a lake or, for example, the roof of a house, it did not take a long life path. As a result, I already did not imagine myself without him at this moment. For a long time I was accompanied by small asusy, Sonya and even netbook-acer, with Winda on board, periodically replaced on a console-friendly Linux ... Not so long ago I had a MacBook Air 11 "in my bag, which also has everything in order with mobility and all the necessary software is there, and it works very smartly, and still the factor of the experiment didn’t affect at the same time. And I became an “apple”.
New life with a new laptop, as you might have guessed, I enjoyed exactly until the moment something terrible happened and I climbed through RMM to the server. Logged in, launched the application ... and got a suspiciously black screen. Stochastic keystrokes did not fix absolutely nothing. With the server it was bad, but it could not be so bad! As luck would have it, there was no other computer nearby, and I was cursing at the site. And, collecting the raid that was scattered there, I set out to find out that it had let me down so much. And then there was the news for the news, one more fun the other.
At first, there was Google, from which it became clear that perverts admining from the server’s MacBook via RMM are just a couple of people, all waiting for an answer to the question “how about?”. I agree, if you think that I am not the strictest follower of the Puritan IT-morals, but the solution is still found.
Remember i mentioned java? That was the first thing I sinned about. What did the old javist do? That's right, I went to java.sun.com for an update, and I learned there that Java is built into the OS and is not installed separately! (The noise was about 10 years ago, but everything was already forgotten!) And that I already have the latest Java, 1.6. But not for long, and there were enthusiasts offering ready-made assemblies of previous versions. In the case went 1.5 and 1.4. And JRE, and JDK. Both 32-and 64-bit. The result did not differ much, except that with some of them nothing started at all. Thoughts went in the direction of the virtual machine with Ubuntu or something more compact (128 Gig total, hard something!). For some reason, I simply did not want to install a virtual one.
From virtualization, I somehow quickly moved on to emulation options. Looking in the direction of fink, I also quickly broke off, he did not put his packages with Java, but hooked to the system ones. It seems that Linux-like Java cannot be inserted ... Stooop! And there are still windows! And there with the emulation everything is not bad - there is Wine and Winebottler, and Crossover! How would you just attach Java to a local browser? .. When the thought came to mind, I laughed, yes, I still laugh at that, it didn't work out as elegant as it could be, but everything turned out!
Crossover became the savior, this is a commercial version of Wine, but I don’t exclude that Winebottler could also save the day. Putting just Java would be a good theoretical exercise, and I simplified my usability a bit by putting Firefox first. It’s not supported directly from the Crossover installation profiles, however, without being something monstrous, I got up without problems. During its installation, I created a “bottle” based on Windows XP (it’s like a working system image of the Windows environment, there may be many for different programs). And then I put the JRE for Windows in the same “bottle” just by downloading it from this Firefox and launching it. The only option with the “online” installation did not work, refusing to open a vital URL for itself, but the “offline” installer worked without problems. Then everything went like clockwork: Firefox easily went into the RMM web interface, the Java application started with the emulated Web Start, and I got a long-awaited screen:
Perhaps the meaning of this, not the shortest story, is that in the modern variety of software solutions, you can always find your “explosive mix”, which will allow you to make friends with the incompatible, initially favorite interface and your favorite laptop. Even without resorting to virtualization.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/117262/
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