[Nottingham] Installation without monitor

[Jonathan]

Evening all,

I've acquired an old(ish) box off a relative (1ghz . 512mb) which I've
lugged down to University with me on the train. My predicament is I
don't have access to a monitor (well not for another week or so); but
infact once I get ssh up and running I won't need one anyway.

My goal is to get gentoo installed on the box. It is possible to
install gentoo through ssh, but you first need to set the root
password and start the ssh server. Given that the box is isolated from
the outside world, could anyone suggest a method of executing those
commands without a visual output. I've tried the 'bash the keys and
prey' method with no avail :(

Best Regards, Jonathan.