CurlyShavings

This may not be relevant to many of you reading this blog but I have found one of the few remaining copies of the user manual for the HP J3591A, also known as the HP Secure Web Console, or SWC.

I've had one of these HP J3591A devices for years but without the user manual, it was kind of useless as the setup process is quite arcane.

It's a nice little device, about the size of a VCR/VHS tape with a 10Mb ethernet port and a serial connector for your serial TTY on a headless server. It requires 13v, 300mA power but the AC/DC adapter provided (P/N: 0950-3415) is of the 12V, 1.0A variety.

What's that you say? You haven't had server with serial consoles since the late 1990's? Oh, never mind, then. Neither have I, I'm discovering.

What's this used for?

This can be really useful for those servers with a serial TTY console that you don't want to expose via SSH. Put the server in your DMZ with the minimum of ports exposed (you do this already, right?) and connect this little device to its serial console and run its ethernet to your internal network. (Yeah, there are reasons to not do this—make sure you take calculated and thought-through risks, don't just do things for the sake of doing them.)

So here's a link for the J3591A HP Secure Web Console manual. Yes, I recognize that I'm violating copyright law. Here's how I'm justifying this: a) it's not (update: easily found) on the HP support site, b) through my searches for a copy I have seen many requests for one and c) no one else seems to have one. If you're HP and want me to take this down, please contact me (it's not hard to figure out how) and I will comply as soon as I receive your notice.