Running Old Desktops Headless? 347
CajunArson writes "I recently dug up an old P4 that is in fine working order and did what any self-respecting Slashdotter would do: I slapped Linux on it to experiment with making an NFSv4 server. One other thing I did was to remove the old AGP video card to save on power, since this is a headless machine. Now, I removed the video card after the installation, and I'm doing just fine as long as the machine will boot to a state where networking works and I can SSH to it. My question: Is there a good solution to allow me to log into this box if it cannot get on the network? I'm looking for solutions other than slapping a video card back in. In my case, I will have physical access to the machine. A few caveats to make it interesting: This question is for plain old desktop/laptop systems, not network servers designed to run headless. Also, I am aware of the serial console, but even 'old' machines may only have USB, and I have not seen any good documentation on how and whether USB works as a substitute. Finally, if there is any way to access the BIOS settings without needing a video card, that would be an extra bonus, but I'm satisfied with just local OS access starting from the GRUB prompt."
Serial header on the motherboard (Score:5, Interesting)
You can still buy SP add-in cards (Score:2, Interesting)
They ARE still available, and for as little as $15. USB/serial port adapters do work for outgoing connections from a laptop or PC, but you will probably need an adapter card for the 'server' if it does not have a serial port.
KVM over IP (Score:4, Interesting)
KVM over IP Network Card [startech.com]
I've never done business with this company. I just googled and took the first link.
Video card may be the least of your power worries (Score:4, Interesting)
I have no idea how much power your AGP card used, but unless it was a gaming rig in its glory days, the CPU probably absorbs most of the power, especially since you mentioned that it is a Pentium 4. I would see if there are any power-saving features in your BIOS and enable them, undervolt your processor to just the speed that you need, and get a cheap PCI video card for when problems occur. I've never used the serial port for diagnostics, but I don't think it will help much if you ever run into a situation where your system won't boot.
Didn't find a good solution (Score:4, Interesting)
I have been doing something similar for half a decade now, in a firewall/storage/NAT server running Debian stable. I found that the only really critical operation is changing the kernel, and for that I have a vido card handy (by now I use a low-power board with integrated graphics). For other things, including updates, I just cross my fingers.
The options that are there to do without the spare video card are basically IPMI (expensive, needs special mainboard), virtualisation and a serial console + remote reset capability. A serial console needs for your kernel to come up, and in fairness, also needs remote reset capability. It also needs a second computer to connect the serial line to. I used that for a test machine in a computer cluster with good results for several years.
Re:Good luck (Score:4, Interesting)
Even easier, go to eBay and get a PCI video card for a couple of dollars. I got an ATI Rage with 8MB of memory for something like 2$ plus about 4$ shipping. It's only a few watts, which if you really freak out about power usage, you can recover by lowering the CPU voltage and the frequency to a bit lower than the normal. Well, anyways you'll make it more economic simply by replacing the power supply with a 80-85+ certified one, but it's probably more expensive than the whole computer, or the money saved in 2-3 years.
Coreboot (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.coreboot.org if your motherboard is supported
Recycle your computer (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Serial console (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually worked on a small project that involved deploying headless desktop-based Debian servers to locations all over the continental US.
We'd fed-ex the boxes, and most of the time, they'd show up with a hard drive detached, or worse (one fedex ground shipment from CA to FL knocked the RAM right out of the slots on one box). What was worse, we didn't have any technical expertise on site to speak of, so even simple problems were hard to diagnose.
The ASUS motherboards we were using happened to have serial ports, and the BIOS also happened to natively support pumping text-mode input/output over said serial interface -- so you could edit BIOS settings, tweak bootloader settings, put the machine in single user mode and fsck the whole disk, etc. etc. all over serial.
We experimented with plugging these things into serial-over-ip devices; specifically, one like this one [digi.com] -- although I think we paid about $60 each. Results were mixed. For one, it was pretty painful getting things operating at a reasonable serial bitrate (especially for curses-esque interfaces like the BIOS settings interface -- characters were getting lost), and making them reliably accessible over IP wasn't easy either. You could configure these things to "phone home" when they were powered on, but the configuration interface and documentation was pretty bad.
If I recall correctly, KVM over IP devices were a bit more pricey.
So, long story short, when it comes to low-cost remote server management, in my experience, there's something of a lack of quality offerings.
Re:Good luck (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd agree with buying a cheap video card from e-bay. A few years ago, my local 2nd hand computer supplier put out a bin of old video cards, and I picked up about 20 ATI Mach64's with 512k-1mb of memory each... :) they work great in servers. :)
As to the OP's question... whatever happened to using a KVM? They're pretty inexpensive, and really easy to get your hands on. If it's just a play server, set it on the floor next to your regular computer, and use your existing keyboard/mouse/display. Most modern KVM's will emulate a connected display and input devices so that the computer will never know that it's not connected, meaning you don't have to tweak/configure anything in the computer to get it to run headless.
Re:Good luck (Score:2, Interesting)
But if the server is to run headless, all you need is a good syslog system (which should be set up by default) and ssh.
Re:RTFLDP (Score:3, Interesting)
Hi, original question-poster here. Thanks for the information, but I was wondering if GRUB would work over a USB serial console as well. I've heard that serial console support works fine after the kernel is up and the USB drivers are in place, but can GRUB run over a USB serial adapter as well?
Will it pass POST? (Score:2, Interesting)
You've still got a keyboard, right? (Score:2, Interesting)
HTH.HAND.
Re:Good luck (Score:3, Interesting)
Still requires a video card.
My question is has he tested the motherboard to see if it'll boot without a video card? I've seen many a board that would error if a card wasn't found. If a card is required then just deal with the $6 a month, or if you really wanna do something get a 9 watt Geforce 7300 [codinghorror.com] for under $20 on ebay [ebay.com] which would use $8 in electricity a year [handymath.com] at 10 cents/kw-hr.
But according to this chart [codinghorror.com] even the greatest 3D video cards of 2006 only used 30 watts at idle, which is $26 a year [handymath.com], and if this is a old P4 then it's probably not even using a 3D card as modern as that. I'd say just leave the card in there and not worry about it, it's probably costing a dollar or two a month at most.
Re:Just put the vid card back? (Score:3, Interesting)
Which brings us to the fundamental mistake in the question:
This question is for plain old desktop/laptop systems, not network servers designed to run headless.
There's actually no such thing as a "server designed to run headless", at least not in the x86 world. All the widely used server designs evolved out of desktop PCs.
Until recently, my job was documenting Sun x64 servers. Every single system I worked with at Sun had an embedded video adapter. A system might go through its entire working life without a monitor being plugged into that adapter, but it was always there. And these were all "green" systems, designed to minimize energy consumption. Indeed, we sometimes lost a few sales because our PCI slots didn't provide enough power to handle high-end video adapters. Yes, people do buy servers and then use them as workstations!
I didn't work with SPARC systems at all, but I know the low- and medium-end Sun systems all come with embedded video adapters as well. It just doesn't add anything to the manufacturing or operating cost of the system, and although it's rarely needed, working around it's absence can be a real pain.
I think maybe the high-end SPARC servers lack any kind of video port. But not to save power! I imagine these are the last remnants of the days when Sun relied on proprietary tech a lot more than they do now. I do know that these are the only Sun products that are still manufactured in Sun factories, instead of being outsourced.
PC Weasel (Score:3, Interesting)
The closest thing to a Consumer Desktop Remote Management card I've found is a "PC Weasel" which I saw back in 2000... http://www.realweasel.com/intro.html [realweasel.com]
That said, the website hasn't been updated since ~2000, it's expensive, but is the closest thing to what you're asking for, "Headless BIOS access" without going with real server hardware. Personally, I'd just keep a video card in the thing and hook it to a KVM switch... It's not going to pull that much extra power.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)