[olug] headless PC operation

Sean Edwards cybersean3000 at yahoo.com
Wed Aug 27 18:02:20 UTC 2003


You are right! I misunderstood!  What you are talking
about is at power-on, before the OS even boots!  How
silly of me!

Sorry

--- "Matthew G. Marsh" <mgm at midwestlinux.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 27 Aug 2003, Sean Edwards wrote:
> 
> > It is pretty cool and not that hard.  One way is
> to
> > edit /etc/inittab to not spawn any tty* (local
> > terminals accessible via CTRL+F*), and only spawn
> > terminal sessions to active serial ports.  Here is
> an
> > example of an inittab entry from the "TEXT
> TERMINAL
> > HOWTO":
> 
> You have completely missed the point. By "headless"
> I refer to running the
> physical hardware of the machine irrelevant of OS.
> Please go read the
> realweasal page. The use you refer to is the OS
> usage after the machine
> has started. But you cannot get the BIOS that way.
> What Neal & I were
> referring to is the ability to have the _entire_ box
> run headless
> including the BIOS. IE: Using your setup how do you
> see the BIOS screen
> over the serial console? Your setup will only work
> once the BIOS, POST,
> etal are over and the OS has full boot-strap load
> completed.
> 
> In example - the BIOS in the intel-clone rack mount
> I referred to allows
> me to type in LILO prompt variables over a dialup
> modem connection. Your
> setup cannot. See?
> 
> > S1:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L 19200 ttyS1 vt102
> 
> Also - check out the "Serial Console mode" for the
> kernel which does not
> even care about or use init. You usually have to
> compile it into the
> kernel manually. The command above assumes that you
> are using init. You
> don't have to have init to boot...
> 
> > To save on memory and increase performance when
> > running Linux as a desktop (X, GNOME, BlackBox,
> etc.),
> > I usually edit the inittab to spawn only 2 or 3
> local
> > terminals.
> >
> > -=Sean Edwards=-
> > cybersean3000 at yahoo.com
> >
> >
> > --- "Matthew G. Marsh" <mgm at midwestlinux.com>
> wrote:
> > > On Tue, 26 Aug 2003, neal rauhauser wrote:
> > >
> > > > http://www.realweasel.com/
> > >
> > > Cool. Now that is a groovin' gadget. I run
> buttloads
> > > o'servers headless
> > > but they are spanko about the BIOS (except the
> intel
> > > and ibm rack mount
> > > systems). Heh - curious if anyone with those
> name
> > > brand racks (Dell etc)
> > > knows if they can do true headless in the BIOS.
> I
> > > know my intel
> > > clone'o'rack bios does. And the ibm racks seem
> to
> > > (at least the few I have
> > > played with).
> > >
> > > >   This site is mentioned in the Absolute
> OpenBSD
> > > book - if you've got
> > > > $250, you can make a machine headless/serial.
> I
> > > can think of a few
> > > > immediate uses for this one ...
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > mailto:neal at lists.rauhauser.net
> > > > phone:402-301-9555
> > > > "After all that I've been through, you're the
> only
> > > one who matters,
> > > > you never left me in the dark here on my own"
> -
> > > Widespread Panic
> > >
> > >
> --------------------------------------------------
> > > Matthew G. Marsh,  President
> > > Paktronix Systems LLC
> > > 1506 North 59th Street
> > > Omaha  NE  68104
> > > Phone: (402) 553-2288
> > > Email: mgm at midwestlinux.com
> > > WWW:  http://www.midwestlinux.com
> > >
> --------------------------------------------------
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> >
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> 
> --------------------------------------------------
> Matthew G. Marsh,  President
> Paktronix Systems LLC
> 1506 North 59th Street
> Omaha  NE  68104
> Phone: (402) 553-2288
> Email: mgm at midwestlinux.com
> WWW:  http://www.midwestlinux.com
> --------------------------------------------------
> _______________________________________________
> OLUG mailing list
> OLUG at olug.org
> http://lists.olug.org/mailman/listinfo/olug


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