[Westwales] headless linux

[wwlug at anotherdimension.net]

James:
> its been a bit quiet on this list recently, so i've got a question!

Pipe down over there!  Some of us are trying to lurk.

> so the challenge is simple, how to install, and get it into
> an accessable state, with telnet or ssh.  maybe over my network?

I guess that the easiest way is to move the hard drive into a 'more capable'
computer, do the install then move it back.

Alternatively (if you've got a CD-ROM drive in it) you could create a live
CD which will bring the system up to the stage where it can DHCP for an IP
address (or if you build the CD yourself I suppose you could hard-code it),
start up SSH then you can connect in and do a manual install onto the hard
disk (distributions like Debian I believe you can basically just untar the
base.tgz onto your empty hard disk, chroot to it and finish off your config
by running lilo, etc).

Good luck,

John

PS> I remember that Laplink had a cool feature whereby you could connect the
two computers via the parallel port, type a DOS command on one and it would
receive a boot-strap squirted down the parallel line by the other machine
and execute it.  I wonder if anyone's ever thought of writing a bootstrap
floppy disk which would allow you to do this kind of thing for a linux
install?