hello folks!

here's my situation: i've got two WTI RPB+ remote power switches (essentially a 5-port power strip which you can control via serial interface to make each of the ports switch on and off independently). they work fine; i plug a DB-9 cable into the back of my machine, fire up minicom, and i have full control.

however, my eventual plan is to use these as fencing devices for a small RHCS cluster i'm building, and so the fencing process will need to be scriptable. RHCS wants to fence by invoking a "/sbin/ fence_<whatever>" script that uses Net::Telnet to connect to the fencing device and then enters the commands.

so, it seems that what i need is a telnet server running on my CentOS box that, instead of calling /bin/login when someone connects, instead starts up a serial session (i'd prefer something more transparent than minicom, if possible). anyone have any good ideas on how to do this? i had been thinking of creating a user for this purpose whose shell was /usr/bin/minicom, but i'm open to other suggestions.

thanks, steve

--- If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction. - Fabian, Twelfth Night, III,v