Re: how to make a machine into a headless box


Subject: Re: how to make a machine into a headless box
From: Tom (thogland@alaskatech.org)
Date: Tue Jan 15 2002 - 16:13:23 AKST


On Tue, 15 Jan 2002, Greg Jetter wrote:
> I have a linux server I want to make into a headless box , that is no
> monitor/keyboard , is there a howto somewhere ? can any point me into the
> right direction .
>
> I tried booting without the keyboard and get an error , the machine just
> stops and request that I press f1 to continue , kind of hard to do without a
> keyboard.
>
> Could I safely remove the keyboard and monitor once it was booted ?

You can't really safely remove the keyboard and mouse when the power is
on, although it sometimes happens without any problems. What you probably
want to do is make sure you've got some serial port entries active in
/etc/inittab, then turn off anything in the BIOS that says "Halt on:"
(usually it says "halt on all but keyboard/mouse" or something similar -
you need "halt on not-a-damn-thing"). That way you'll still get the
keyboard/mouse errors, but it'll still boot normally after that. Also, if
you leave a video card in it, then in case of problems you can always
power it off, stick keyboard/mouse/monitor on it, then power it on and
start fixing...



This archive was generated by hypermail 2a23 : Tue Jan 15 2002 - 16:17:32 AKST