[Nottingham] Installation without monitor

[Steve Caddy]

Jonathan wrote:
> 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 :(

Gentoo doesn't even start with a serial tty by default, so I think 
bashing out some commands is the best you can do:

passwd
<new pass>
<new pass>
/etc/init.d/sshd start

...should get it going.

Steve