[Westwales] headless linux

[P.L.Hayes]

On Tuesday 21 October 2003 23:36, jms2 at aber.ac.uk wrote:
> its been a bit quiet on this list recently, so i've got a question!
>
> i've got an old box, and i dont have a graphics card, or a keyboard
> that'll work with it, and i dont think a mouse.
>
> so i want to install linux on it, and run a few servers, ftp, www, etc
>
> i've had a look on google, and there are some suggestions about null modem
> cables and serial ports.  again, niether of which i have.
>
> so the challenge is simple, how to install, and get it into an accessable
> state, with telnet or ssh.  maybe over my network?
>
> please help!
>
> James Stuttard
> jms2 at aber.ac.uk
>
>
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> Westwales at mailman.lug.org.uk
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I recently installed Debian on something like what you've described but I did 
have a graphics card and I needed it because the bios in the old box needed a 
setting changing so it'd boot without a keyboard. With no graphics card at 
all you'll have to pull out the hard disk and put it temporarily in another 
machine to install to it then put it back. Of course if you haven't even got 
a hard drive then there are ways to boot over a network via an ethernet card 
or from a floppy and have a root filesystem served by another box via nfs, I 
did this once for a box I had with no hard drive. I downloaded an iso image 
of a complete 50 MB filesystem (redhat iirc) and mounted it loopback then 
exported it to the diskless box via nfs. I didn't have the kind of bios/
ethercard set up needed for ethernet booting so I had to use a floppy with a 
kernel set up for mounting root over nfs. 

Anyway, if your old box has got a hard drive and if you can find a crappy old 
graphics card and borrow a monitor/keyboard for an hour or two, it'll save 
you a lot of trouble. You'd just need to download the Debian floppy images 
and start the install from them. All the rest of the installing is done over 
the net. You just connect the ethercard in the old box to one on your network 
and make sure you set up networking and nat properly. Once you've got sshd up 
and running on the old box you can retrieve your keyboard and monitor.

If you really can't find a graphics card and your bios is ok about not having 
a keyboard and it's set up to boot off the floppy  you could go with the 
nfsroot kernel on a floppy with root fs on a box on your local net. Then you 
can ssh into the old box and mess with it's hard drive until you've got a 
full system on it (dd the rootfs over the local net maybe). Then you just 
make a normal boot floppy with the hard drive as root and you can ditch the 
nfs stuff. 

If you haven't got a network card then your options are severely limited and 
personally I wouldn't know which way to go - well I would - I'd go to the 
network card shop!