More getting yelled at by my customer. This time, they were on handsfree, with a loud IBM server in the background. They would say something and I couldn't hear, so I'd repeat my question, and they'd yell (angrily) at me. To make matters worse, they'd yell leading questions at me, in a mode similar to how partisan reporters grill presidential candidates: "So you're saying that if we disconnect the console it won't work?"
From what I can tell, here's what went down. Dude boots up three servers. They are all on a remote command console, so no keyboards or monitors are connected -- only dial-in/terminal connections are possible. These servers are humming along happily, and dude decides to check one to make sure it's OK, so he connects a keyboard/monitor, and it's "apparently" hung at a FreeBSD boot prompt -- boot -Dh -- which is technically correct behaviour. Since the machines are on a console, the only thing the monitor should see is the prompt. All other output is going to the console. All other control is *also* going to the console instead of the keyboard. Dude gets freaked out by this and hard reboots all three servers (without unmounting any of the hard drives). Now the -Dh prompt is still showing on the monitor, and the consoles are hung at an fsck prompt. So he reboots again, 3-6 more times. Then he calls me up and yells at me for a while.
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