Using one for couple of months so far. I need it once a month for a couple of hours or so, but it saves me 3x more time, so money well spent. But wow, at 3x less price tag it a deal!
JetKVM Mini
81–90 of 243 posts
Re: JetKVM Mini
#82It is really hard to find on the site what kvm stands for. Guess people going there knows what it stands for but think it could be spelled out once at least.
Not to be taken in a bad way but, so many people wondering "what is a KVM" is telling a lot about HN reader base evolution.
It used to be a time that any proper geek/hacker would obviously know what a KVM is. More the normal KVM than the IP-KVM that could be considered a marvel of our time in the end.
Because it was so common to have just a single screen and keyboard but multiple tower desktop computers. Especially at school and home. Nowadays we mostly all use laptops so it is well irrelevant and I guess only a few young reader ever saw one in the field.
Re: JetKVM Mini
#83On a related note, I came across this USB-C KVM on pre-order the other day. It ostensibly supports Tailscale, which would be really useful. https://sipeed.com/nanokvm-go
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Re: JetKVM Mini
#84On a related note, I came across this USB-C KVM on pre-order the other day. It ostensibly supports Tailscale, which would be really useful. https://sipeed.com/nanokvm-go
I have the predecessor at home, it's solid and the tailscale support is great!
Re: JetKVM Mini
#85I have 4 of the old ones in service and they're great. Whenever I need to remotely reboot a server those come in handy just great, no more fear of what I'm going to do if the server doesn't come back online.
It also solved the issue I had with entering a password on FDE (full disk encryption) systems. Previously I had to rely on a janky solution with booting into BusyBox so that the system can be accessed remotely and using that to enter the password. Now it's just plain FDE set up during Debian install - I reboot, use JetKVM to enter the password and that's it.
One note though - I don't use their online cloud service access thingy and connect to those using my Wireguard deployment. The hardware is nice, open source is nice, but I wouldn't trust that level of access to any cloud solution by any vendor.
Re: JetKVM Mini
#86Not really related to this, but are there good non-IP KVM's left? I'm in the market for one so we can move two home office desks into 1, but all the ones I find seem kinda shit. Asking for USB-C + 2 hdmi or displayports is apparently unreasonable
Re: JetKVM Mini
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why even bother when these things (of another make) can be had for less than $20 on Chinese market. This artificial scarcity bullshit need to die.
I don't quite trust this class of devices to be programmed in China by who knows who. KVMs are among those things that need authentic, business-registered suppliers that hold a trackable reputational responsibility.
I totally agree with you, but where are those trustworthy companies? It seems every household names in the consumer electronics space are hell-bent on abusing their customers in every conceivable way. Just look at the LG scandal, and that is standard practice across the entire industry. It has to start with strong consumer protection laws and strong enforcement of those laws.
Re: JetKVM Mini
#88The original one is shaped weirdly and hard to use in my unordered stack of machines and wires. I like the new shape here better.
I was actually thinking the exact opposite. The big “tail” on the original gives you something to build an enclosure around, and the ports are all on the face opposite the display. That shape makes it easy to 3d print a mount for a 10” rack. This one has stuff on four out of six surfaces (display, button, card slot, ports), and the two free surfaces are at a right angle to each other instead of being on opposite side…
I was thinking the point was it was so light to have it hanging on the cables themselves, as I'm certain absolutely no one does in any of their installations...
Re: JetKVM Mini
#89I have 4 of the old ones in service and they're great. Whenever I need to remotely reboot a server those come in handy just great, no more fear of what I'm going to do if the server doesn't come back online. It also solved the issue I had with entering a password on FDE (full disk encryption) systems. Previously I had to rely on a janky solution with booting into BusyBox so that the system can be accessed remotely an…
>It also solved the issue I had with entering a password on FDE (full disk encryption) systems
I've fixed that with secure boot (my own keys, not Microsoft's) and TPM2. From that host I can run a program named Tang, which operates in conjunction with another program named Clevis.
On hosts without secure boot such as RPis and other ARM SBCs, Clevis will contact Tang at boot time and decrypt the disk.
Incidentally my x86 with secure boot has intel vPro so the KVM is not needed. The remaining sisters have a piece of lost technology used for decades to solve the KVM problem: serial (UART specifically) connections.
Some seasoned sysadmins might have memories of dialing their Sun servers serial ports for remote administration.
Re: JetKVM Mini
#90I have 4 of the old ones in service and they're great. Whenever I need to remotely reboot a server those come in handy just great, no more fear of what I'm going to do if the server doesn't come back online. It also solved the issue I had with entering a password on FDE (full disk encryption) systems. Previously I had to rely on a janky solution with booting into BusyBox so that the system can be accessed remotely an…
>It also solved the issue I had with entering a password on FDE (full disk encryption) systems I've fixed that with secure boot (my own keys, not Microsoft's) and TPM2. From that host I can run a program named Tang, which operates in conjunction with another program named Clevis. On hosts without secure boot such as RPis and other ARM SBCs, Clevis will contact Tang at boot time and decrypt the disk. Incidentally my x…
To me, it is a feature to have a password required at boot to unlock the drive. Relying on TPM for keymatter is convenient but comes with caveats I don't like. I don't personally trust that the boot chain and OS on a modern system are secure enough for this model to be similarly secure to using a passphrase properly. And if I care enough to try to secure something in this way, I definitely care enough to pick something that I believe would be at least truly secure at rest with a decent degree of certainty.
TPM based unlock does at least still fulfill the goal of ensuring data stored to disk is encrypted so that it can't easily be recovered from a discarded drive.