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 console (Score:5, Informative)
The question about bios settings is a good one though, and I don't know.
Good luck (Score:3, Informative)
Anyone know some tricks to get serial console to work with grub on a desktop mobo?
Re: (Score:3)
You would need a lights out management card, many servers have them built in but they're not usually found on desktops.
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.
Re:Good luck (Score:5, Insightful)
You're all putting WAY too much thought into this. The easiest way to do this is to take a magnet and manually adjust your hard drive until it has the SSH capability you're looking for. Everyone has at least 1 or 2 good magnets laying around, and with a steady hand this could become a great do it yourself project. Plus, you get epeen bragging rights when people start talking about how they used to code in assembly. You coded with a magnet and a HD.
Wait? That would be a pain in the ass? Almost impossible?
The AGP card is rated for 63 watts, maximum. Over a year that's 552 kWh. Paying for electricity at $0.15 a kWh you run into an additional $6.90 a month to run the AGP card.
1. Find a quarter in your couch cushions.
2. Plug the damn thing in for the 10 minutes it would take to setup a remote SSH connection using the suggestions people have put in this thread.
3. Pay the additional power bill with the quarter.
4. Move on with your life
5.....
6. Profit!
Re:Good luck (Score:5, Funny)
You're all putting WAY too much thought into this. The easiest way to do this is to take a magnet and manually adjust your hard drive until it has the SSH capability you're looking for.
Butterflies. What the OP needs are butterflies.
http://xkcd.com/378/ [xkcd.com]
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Good luck (Score:5, Insightful)
the processor is a P4 ... why worry about the power consumption of the AGP card ?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (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: (Score:3, Informative)
Fixed that for you. :) Most high-end motherboards don't have an on-board GPU, because most people who'd be willing to spend $250 on a motherboard (when you can get one for $60) probably won't balk at buying a discrete graphics card, and in fact, probably plan on buying a discrete graphics card anyway, because integrated graphics tend to be a generation or two out of date.
If I were building my own server, I'd make sure to get a motherboard that ha
Re: (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 ca
Re:Good luck (Score:5, Informative)
Grub works just fine with serial console. Add the following lines to your grub.conf:
serial --unit=0 --speed=38400 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
terminal --timeout=10 serial console
Also, make sure to add:
console=tty1 console=ttyS0,38400n8
to your "kernel" line for linux boot images so the kernel will send console messages to the console. Of course the kernel itself must be configured to support serial console too!
RTFLDP (Score:5, Informative)
GRUB:
Define the serial port and configure GRUB to use the serial port, as shown in Figure 4-6. Figure 4-6. GRUB configuration for serial console
--unit is the number of the serial port, counting from zero, unit 0 being COM1. Note that the values of --parity are spelt out in full: no, even and odd. The common abbreviations n, e and o are not accepted. If there is mysteriously no output on the serial port then suspect a syntax error in the serial or terminal commands. If you also want to use and attached monitor and keyboard as well as the serial port to control the GRUB boot loader then use the alternative configuration in Figure 4-7.
Kernel:
The Linux kernel is configured to select the console by passing it the console parameter. The console parameter can be given repeatedly, but the parameter can only be given once for each console technology. So console=tty0 console=lp0 console=ttyS0 is acceptable but console=ttyS0 console=ttyS1 will not work. When multiple consoles are listed output is sent to all consoles and input is taken from the last listed console. The last console is the one Linux uses as the /dev/console device.
The syntax of the console parameter is given in Figure 5-1.
Figure 5-1. Kernel console syntax, in EBNF
Quite a bit more info at tdlp.org..
Re: (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?
Re:Serial console (Score:5, Informative)
A serial console. As far as I know, this is what serial ports were actually put into computers for in the first place.
Sigh. I wish more people (the home user Slashdot types) would just go buy a serial cable (and/or serial+USB adapter) and see for themselves how trivial it is to set up, and how valuable that setup can be. There's plenty of reasons why one would *want* to rely on serial, aside from the usual "What if the network is down?" scenario.
For added fun (when there's more than one computer involved), consider something like this [kd85.com]
The question about bios settings is a good one though, and I don't know.
For the OP and most of us, that's a noop. What I would have suggested instead of a powerhungry P4 (or even PIII), is a soekris box [soekris.com]. There's no VGA at all, so the BIOS (and everything else) is accessible via serial only. My "headless" VIA boxes are a PIA by comparison.
Granted, Soekris boxes are typically used to perform networking functions, but setting one up with a hard drive (laptop or SSD ideally) and running a web, IMAP, NFS, Samba, etc. server is common enough and performance is perfectly adequate. A few bucks more, but hey, they're rackmountable so you can impress your friends and neighbours. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm curious if those small USB 'monitors' would work for this. You'd only need to plug it in as needed and could use it on your main machine when not being used on the server. Or, he could always get a USB video card.
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps because people other than the story writer will read this thread?
I'm currently looking to build a home server and would have considered a soekris except that they're quite expensive and I'd like something with a little more grunt and disk space.
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:Serial console (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Serial console (Score:5, Funny)
I recommend clairvoyance and telekinesis.
Now, now, there's no need for snarkiness. We can accommodate the specs without resorting to hocus-pocus and imaginary abilities.
The solution is quite simple - he just needs to get a lemon (although lemon juice might suffice, it's not optimal, as I'll explain further.)
How it works is simple - you put a 1/2" slice of the lemon in your mouth, then stick in the end of the ethernet cable. The juice from the lemon reacts with your metal fillings and the copper from the network cable, generating electricity, which can then be used to set up an ethernet link by humming at the correct frequencies.
Once slice of lemon will provide approximately 8 to 10 minutes of power for this - be careful not to slice the lemon too thick or thin - too thin and you'll run out of power too soon, and too thick and you'll be wasting the juice in the center (This is why lemon juice is suboptimal - it washes away too quickly, so you'll be needing to "recharge" every 20-30 seconds.)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Serial console (Score:5, Informative)
Did you even read the summary? He specifically mentioned that he knows about serial console and many of these machines might not have serial ports.
Some machines don't have serial ports. The easy solution is to buy a serial card for these machines.
Everything else is more expensive and more complex.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Serial console (Score:4, Informative)
.. which need an already loaded OS to work... so what if GRUB is fucked up for some reason and the USB driver is not loaded yet to operate the serial console?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> The easy solution is to buy a serial card for these machines.
No.
By far the easiest solution is to leave the VGA card in the machine.
Removing it to save power is a pointless exercise. As long as you don't have a monitor running removing the card saves virtually nothing.
Unpower floppys, CD readers, and all the fans you can get away with, but yanking video cards just silly.
What makes this post especially silly is that many older machines have on-board video anyway.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A vga card just does not draw that much.
Running headless, there would be a static image or black screen shown. Why would anything be drawing to the screen?
(There is no reason any sane person would run a screen saver on a headless system, or even use runlevel 5).
If he wanted to do Folding At home with his GPU he wouldn't be yanking out the AGP card now would he!?!??
Substituting a trash-bin VGA card, (which every harware hacker has 8 or 10 of in the back room) saves power over anything with a smart GPU, and s
Re: (Score:2)
And your last computer was bought 5 years ago?
Intel DP965LT, Asus M4A78 Plus (AMD based) motherboards. Then there's my new toshiba laptop. Walk into best buy and look at them.
USB Serial Ports Windows Drivers (Score:3, Informative)
In general, USB Serial under Windows is horrible. Windows XP has many USB serial ports with buggy drivers. Most devices that I tested had either data corruption issues, or simply wouldn't do high baud rates, or both. If you use the FTDI chipset based devices, then at least no data corruption occurs at high baud rates. All of the drivers
Re: (Score:2)
My Toshiba Portege R500 has 3x USB, 1x S400 IEEE 1394, 1x VGA, 1x Gigabit ethernet, headphone and mic connections, and a card reader. No serial port.
My slightly older Acer cheapo has 3x USB, 1x VGA, 1x S-video, 1x 10/100 ethernet, 1x modem phone connector, headphone and mic, and a card reader. No serial port.
My GF's Eee 1005HA has 3x USB, 1xVGA, 1x 10/100 ethernet, headphone and mic, and a card reader. No serial port.
Maybe you should get out more - a visit to your local overpriced computer store should suff
Just put the vid card back? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I'm way off base here, but putting in an old low memory (2-32MB) APG card isn't going to draw that much power. I totally understand your issues with wanting to run a headless machine, I have a few myself. But honestly I've found it's just a LOT easier to leave a cheapo card in the rig so that if something comes up I don't have to crack open a case.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly, it seems like the OP should just stick a weak video card in the box. It's a lot less troublesome than setting up a serial console or something along those lines (serial console on a machine designed to work with a serial console is a lot easier than doing it on some random $500 desktop).
/Mikael
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The Rage Pro 8MB is the ultimate low power card, and comes in PCI format. Less than 1W power use at idle, and supported by Linux and Windows with built-in drivers. Until 2007 many Intel servers had them on the motherboard, before ATI introduced a new line and Intel moved to their own chips.
Re: (Score:2)
Even better... I have an ancient S3 2MB PCI video card I use when I just want to see if an old MB will boot. It is passively cooled and, obviously for something of this age, requires no additional power beyond what's available from the PCI bus..
My suggestion to the original poster is to try to find such an old card and realize that it draws so little additional power that the convenience is worth it. As with your suggested Rage Pro 8MB, most servers come with similar embedded graphics because the increme
Re: (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,
Control Card? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know there's a type of card that will push the serial interface through the network, if having a serial console (like running HyperTerminal in windows with a Null Modem cable plugged in) is not sufficient. That should allow you to get to the bios without having the monitor plugged in-- that's the theory, at least.
Also, if you're using this system as the lowest wrung sort of server, you might want to look into simply buying some Via Nano or Intel Atom hardware and just creating an ultra low-wattage server. Older desks were not renowned for their power efficiency, so over a few months, if its running 24/7, more efficient hardware might actually pay for itself in terms of energy costs, especially if you're somewhere with expensive power like California. It might be clever to cannibalize your old systems for hard disks and such and use them in this low power system, since the power usage of the hard disk will be largely a software problem, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
Another good idea...
There's brand new intel-Atom based machines for $200 and they only consume about 10 watts - probably less than losses due to inefficiency in the old 486's power supply.
Re:Control Card? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a reasonable suggestion.
If he truly needs a light weight, always on server then a new mini is a good idea. Modern, low power with a built in console. He can get just as much technical fun from setup and tweaking. If he is so impoverished he can't afford the $200-$300 then he probably does not need to be upgrading the old box and running it around the clock.
Personally, I've lost fascination with dinking around with old hardware. If I have a specific solution to implement or new skill to learn, I prefer a more forward looking approach with things that are new.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm looking at replacing our VPN routers with an IPTables/OpenVPN solution. One location doesn't have room for a full-sized PC. Has anyone used any of these minis in that sort of environment?
Re: (Score:2)
Although I'd like to point out, that if you set it up well, you shouldn't have to need to change any settings like that. Most modern Linux distros allow for updates through the console (Ubuntu, Debian, etc.), so I'm a bit baffled why you're so concerned about it. And I can't really think of many reasons to change BIOS settings that often.
serial tty (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
This is the typically ideal solution, when there's other hardware around to take advantage of. C-Kermit is also your able-bodied manservant for getting all the settings right for the client.
Unfortunately, some BIOS's have never worked well for setting the BIOS interface at anything other than 115.2 KBaud, at least without an undocumented BIOS update. And guess what you need to to the BIOS update? You guessed it: Windows and boot-time console access. I ran into this problem with some new Linux servers and a
Serial header on the motherboard (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Serial header on the motherboard (Score:4, Informative)
As many others have mentioned, the serial console is the way to go. Even if there's no DB9/DB25 serial port out the back, there's likely at least one serial port header on the motherboard. The header/pinout is generally standard, so go digging in that 'really old parts' box that we all have and see if you can dig up a DB9 port mounted on a plate to mount where a card would normally go. It will have a ribbon cable to attach it to the motherboard...
Very good point. The cables are easy to find, too: e.g. http://www.pccables.com/07120.htm [pccables.com] (That's a random cable picture and not an endorsement of the company. YMMV, Caveat Emptor, etc.)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Can this be addressed by the BIOS/GRUB/kernel at boot time?
Serial or custom hardware only, I'm afraid (Score:2)
Either you use a serial console or buy special, expensive hardware that emulates the video card and keyboard. Well, if you're lucky, you can get some used remote administration cards relatively cheap off eBay, but they might require at least some cooperation from the mainboard, or be designed for some particular type of server hardware and might not work with what you have.
As for PCs without a serial port, you could try a USB to serial converter. I'm almost certain it won't work with the builtin kernel-lev
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
WAN LAN Multifunction breakout cable port (connects to system Video, USB, Keyboard, Mouse & Video) External Power Adapter
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.
Pentium 4 power saving (Score:3, Informative)
For P4s and Celeron Prescott/Northwood using same technology, just install cpufreqd and make sure it's using the ondemand governor. cpufrequtils is also useful and doesn't clash. The actual work is done by the kernel module p4_clockmod, must be in /etc/modules.
This makes some difference to power consumption. As for temperature, the best thing I did was to remove the old thermal paste on the CPU/cooler and apply some new Zaward paste - CPU temperature dropped by 20 degrees C (something like 30F).
There is a very simple solution ... (Score:2)
Re:There is a very simple solution ...indeed (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well then, it's a damn good thing that I offered up the simplest solution then ! (What part of my advice requires a network to work?)
Live CD? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
what CD do you recommend? Are there any good (reliability is worth more than features) CDs that come with sshd running by default?, I use a basic slaxCD with remote ssh (need to select that "module"), but it takes a while for all the menus to autoselect as it is designed for use by a person.
serial connection (Score:2)
Network Console on Acid (Score:2)
Typical self-defeating open-source project title. *grin*
iLO (Score:3)
Have a look on ebay for a compaq iLo PCI card. This is a network-attached video card (also providing keyboard and mouse) allowing an administrator to get an actual screen (like VNC) over a network connection.
You'll have access to bios as well!
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.
PXE (Score:2)
Use a live CD distro (I use Damn Small Linux) as a starting point for building the
Wow, serial console kiddos. (Score:2)
I have to say I am surprised that the whole concept of serial consoles, serial cards and what not are completely lost on the Windows generation.
Here are the kernel configs [faqs.org] for using a serial dongle (costs around 5 bucks) on a USB port for as a serial console.
If you don't want to do that buy a serial port on a PCI card (costs around 10 bucks) or just buy a cheap watchdog card (most expensive least work since it emulates vga over serial).
Have you considered an old, low power vga card? (Score:2)
Tossing your AGP card makes sense, but have you considered throwing in an absolutely minimal ISA VGA card?
e.g: http://www.cablesonline.net/25isavgavidc.html [cablesonline.net]
The power requirements would be minimal, and you could run a few similar boxes through a monitor-switch so you wouldn't even need a dedicated monitor....
Re: (Score:2)
Boot loaders support serial comsole (Score:2)
I used to do this in lilo I tink grib supports it also. Don't know if this works with usb serial adapters.
Dell servers have a usfull feature. Redirect bios to serial. This gives you the bios until the kernel loads. After this the kernal must do it. For serail console after boot look for the line in /etc/initab thats looks like this:
#s1:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -L ttyS0 9600 vt100
remove the #
Re: (Score:2)
Use the VGA. It doesn't eat power. Your CPU is what is going to eat power.
The problem is the cost to maintain old hardware is usually higher than just buying new hardware. For starters, my guess is you've got antique IDE drives in there that have seen better days. Those things draw a bit of power, but worse they are nosy. Then you've got the old power hungry CPU and all the loud fans needed to cool it. On top of that, your case is probably old enough that it too has loud fans.
What I'm trying to say is
Re: (Score:2)
(and wow, I guess I replied to a comment instead of to the story... not trying to hijack you, just need my tea)
Re: (Score:2)
> Those things draw a bit of power, but worse they are nosy.
I once had an old IDE drive that got into my bank statements and checkbooks. It then went to the bank and withdrew some cash and headed to Mexico. It then called my mother to inform her about what I had been doing for the past few months. It even made up some stuff. Damn nosy old IDE disks!
Re: (Score:2)
Why is your console running at 9600 bps?
Recycle your computer (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Sheeva dev kits have a great wiki:
http://www.openplug.org/plugwiki/index.php/Getting_the_Plug_Computer_Running_with_an_Operating_System [openplug.org]
Mine's due to arrive on the 11th, can't wait.
remote head (Score:2)
A related question... How much in the way of resources does it take to run a GUI app on a box when the X-server is running on another machine? I'm sure it largely depends on the app; a web browser? An IRC client? The gimp is probably right out. :-P
serial is your friend (Score:2)
PCI RS232 card is highly compatible with software and inexpensive, but what P4 doesn't have at least one serial port on it?
A cheap low-power video card could be an option (get one used, since it's an old machine).
As for accessing BIOS, if you had a server motherboard then you'd just flip the option on in BIOS to access it over serial port(you pick the port, bitrate and the emulation mode). But given that you are asking and just pulled out some old system I'm going to guess that this option was not available
If you video card is something like a GeForce 6800 (Score:2)
then sell it on e-bay and get an atom mobo. There are quite a few older, decent systems that need AGP video cards. nVidia has stopped supporting the older TNT and some GeForce 2 cards and the best AGP card that can be purchased is a 7300. The P4 processors were energy hungry beasts, sure you can clock a 3Ghz P4 down to 375 Mhz but it will still use more power and be slower than an Atom.
Of course once you've got your Atom mobo then you might consider a green power supply, and a smaller case and . . . .
My ideas (Score:2)
I have often felt the need for this kind of feature. Not because i removed the video card. But because I didnt always have a monitor connected as i installed the system in a cabinet, and for purposes of remote diagnosis. There is the serial port idea but you need to plug it into another computer. Another option might be to see if any serial to ethernet solution exists, then you can login to the serial port through an ethernet connection. Some network cards have a netboot feature but i dont think this is wha
Re: (Score:2)
Probably having the SSH run while the kernel boots (at least in the very early phases, but perhaps not in later phases) may not be realistic, but filesystem mounting, where most boot time problems seem to occur, can be delayed until after the kernel is booted, as long as the system files can be accessed from the filesystem. This probably would require some kernel level features to be added and so on. So certainly at that point Linux could start an SSH to debug the filesystem problems. But, with newer filesy
Er... (Score:2)
Why not just put the AGP card in a box next to the machine and put it back in if you ever get in a situation where it doesn't respond to SSH?
But how much power do you really think you are saving, here? If the original card was some ass-kicker power hungry thing aimed at gamers, your best bet might be to just go spend $15 on some low-end crappy (and low power consuming) graphics card. Hell...most self respecting geeks I know have ten of those in their garage.
Blind? (Score:2)
Two NICs (Score:2)
Slap a 2nd NIC into the box and hard code the IP address to a private network and slap a loopback connector onto it so it's hot and will come up. Then if the "real" network goes down, you can jack up to the old nic and ssh in.
Headless network servers (Score:2)
So, how would one access one of these?
"Real" servers can do it (Score:3, Insightful)
Many server-class machines have something called IPMI (IP Management Interface), sometimes called LOM (Lights-Out Management). It is essentially KVM over IP, but built into the motherboard, sometimes via a small add-on card.
If you're playing around with desktop equipment, you should know that most boards will refuse to boot if a video card isn't detected. If you're trying to do this the cheap way, pop in the simplest video card you can find, hook it up to a KVM and get on with your life.
I run a bunch of headless machines here, they're all fully-functional PCs. When something breaks, I just whip out a USB keyboard and a VGA extension cord, and deal with it. The rest of the time it's all SSH and/or serial.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
If (hasBootedButWithoutFunctionalNetworkng()){ diaf(); //Network booting won't work without the network
}
FTFY
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
say, for example, the cable is bad, or the card needs to be powercycled for some reason. where is your PXE god now? also, youve just ruined a perfectly good grub boot sector (not that its terribly hard to replace, but youve done it without needing to).
Or shut it down. (Score:3, Funny)
True story - I was working late one night and was busy shutting down everything in my office before going home. One by one I closed terminals on my laptop until typing 'shutdown now' in the last one.
I was still packing stuff and reached over to put my laptop in my bag and blinked at the terminal message 'connection to servername lost.'
With horror I realised that I had shut down our main mailserver! I had forgotten that I was still in an SSH session after reading through exim logfiles trying to find a missin
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
export PS1="${USER}@`hostname -s`:\w$ "
That particular one is for ksh; it might work for bash, too. I don't really use bash.
You could even make the machine name flash red if you wanted to.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You might be interested in molly-guard (available in Debian/Ubuntu, and presumably others):
The package installs a shell script that overrides the existing shutdown/reboot/halt/poweroff commands and first runs a set of scripts, which all have to exit
successfully, before molly-guard invokes the real command.
One of the scripts checks for existing SSH sessions. If any of the four commands are called interactively over an SSH session, the shell script prompts you to enter the name of the host you
You mean like this? (Score:2)
In the late 1990s, I worked at an ISP that had at least a third of the market in a metro of about 200,000 people. I wanted to clear the virtual IP aliases (eth0:1, eth0:2, eth0:3...) on the main DNS/mail/web server, so I could run a script to renumber them cleanly with the next command. By remote, from home, on a Friday night:
for a in {,1,2}{0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9}; do ifconfig eth$a down; done
"Wow, that's lagging. I wonder what's burning cycles. Uh, wow, I can't even get an echo back..."
Re: (Score:2)
Most decent servers have some kind of lights out or serial console capability built in... Only extremely lowend servers don't (typically based on cheap desktop boards) and those are really best avoided if you care about what you're hosting.
Even older highend workstations (sun, sgi etc) always had serial console capability built in, while the servers typically had full lights out (aside from the console, you get full power cycle ability, hardware monitoring etc).
Speaking of ILO tho, i have some HP DL140 and
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There are a variety of 7" size USB monitors available now, can't remember the company who makes them...Would be perfect for running shell only.
http://www.hetmag.nl/nieuws/gadgets/953-mimo-usb-displays [hetmag.nl] sells them, 'cute' displays but not quite functional (yes i want one).
PCWeasel ordering problems (Score:2)
Very interesting, if it were $30.
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't having drivers for this USB monitor imply having a bootable OS too? They don't seem like they would work for the bios or grub.