[LUAU] headless fedora

[Tom Gordon]

Halt on all but keyboard works for me on most cheap mobos.

Dells usually use a Phoenix bios, IIRC.  Or, at least they used to - they
might have their own now.  The features inside could be very different from
machine to machine.  Support.dell.com <http://support.dell.com/>and the
Service Tag on your machine are your friends.

I don't know any video adaptors that care if a monitor is
connected.  Ideally, most Dell servers natively support console redirection
- if yours doesn't and you want the serial console google search for "linux
serial console" or similar for your console redirection.  You will want to
configure your bootloader AND runtime kernel config.  Someone step in if i'm
wrong but one allows you to see the bootloader over serial and the other
allows the linux kernel.

So, for /etc/grub.conf add something like:

serial  --unit=0 --speed=9600 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
terminal --timeout=10 serial console

And change your kernel runtime options (do for every boot config you want it
to work on):

kernel /vmlinuz ro root=LABEL=/ console=ttyS0,9600n8

You may have to fix grub.conf after a kernel upgrade, depending on how smart
the update specs are nowadays.  Should a kernel update break it, your
bootloader should still work over the serial and you can run your old config
or just edit the runtime options interactively - snazzy.

Run level 1 is single-user mode, run level 3 is "text-only".  Edit
/etc/inittab and change "id:5:initdefault:" to "id:3:initdefault:" to change
the default.

Aloha and good luck.


On 10/21/07, Dave Burns <tburns at hawaii.edu> wrote:
>
> Trying to RTFM, but can't seem to find the right FMTR.
>
> I've installed fedora on a dell. I want to unplug the monitor at
> least, maybe keyboard and mouse also, and have it still boot. I tried
> just unplugging the monitor, but it will not boot that way as
> currently configured.
>
> Googling indicates that the bios is the big deal, but my bios doesn't
> seem to mention anything about whether or not to expect a monitor or
> mouse etc. How do I figure out what bios it uses so I can go to their
> web page for more details?
>
> Further, since I used the GUI to set up the machine, it is currently
> set up to start X and gnome or whatever on boot. Don't I need to
> change something so it won't even try to start all that up? Should I
> just tell it to boot to runlevel 1?
>
> Will it talk through the serial port without me nudging it somehow?
>
> I'm sure this must exist somewhere on the net, somehow I am not finding
> it.
>
> Mahalo in advance for any pointers.
> Dave
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