Re: [LUAU] headless fedora
On 10/21/07, Tom Gordon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am a little unclear now - what isn't working? Well, my brain. I'm a bit confused. Also, I was not actually working on it today, just gathering intel for the assault. If your default runlevel is 3, prefdm (and thus gdm) this will not be run. That is what I was overlooking. Doh! It's not an especially responsible to rely totally on sshd Yeah, I know, but I only want to attack one subproblem at a time, and that one appealed to me. Maybe I should go in the opposite order - I can log in over the serial connection when it is still booted runlevel 5 and has a monitor attached, can't I? Mahalo, Dave ___ LUAU@lists.hosef.org mailing list http://lists.hosef.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luau
Re: [LUAU] headless fedora
Dave Burns wrote: Maybe I should go in the opposite order - I can log in over the serial connection when it is still booted runlevel 5 and has a monitor attached, can't I? You can, but you can also use a remote desktop connection. -- Hawaiian Astronomical Society: http://www.hawastsoc.org HAS Deepsky Atlas: http://www.hawastsoc.org/deepsky ___ LUAU@lists.hosef.org mailing list http://lists.hosef.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luau
Re: [LUAU] headless fedora
Peter Besenbruch wrote: Dave Burns wrote: Maybe I should go in the opposite order - I can log in over the serial connection when it is still booted runlevel 5 and has a monitor attached, can't I? You can, but you can also use a remote desktop connection. Yeah, the thing to keep in mind is that having a monitor and a graphical desktop doesn't hinder you from doing anything. I'll give you a chance to configure it and make sure everything is working before disconnecting it. You can test ssh, look into vnc, and make sure it all works from off your local network before disconnecting anything. The other thing to think about is that as long as you can guarantee something like sshd will be running, a second ethernet card with no firewall rules might be easier than a serial console. If you have multiple machines that will be on most of the time, I suggest you setup netconsole so that you can get kernel crash reports, and maybe something like nagios so that you can get emailed if something goes down. -Eric Hattemer ___ LUAU@lists.hosef.org mailing list http://lists.hosef.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luau
Re: [LUAU] headless fedora
BIOS: Go to BIOS setup (F2 on dell?), change Halt on all errors to all but keyboard/mouse, it should boot. X: Turn off gdm, xdm or kdm service, most likely gdm for gnome, X no longer starts until you enable it again, just console login. If you want X without keyboard/mouse, there's an option to ignore keyboard/mouse errors for /etc/X11/xorg.conf and /etc/X11/XF86config. Dumb terminal: edit /etc/inittab, enable T? line for terminal with getty, set speed, serial port and terminal type, connect your dumb terminal, then kill -HUP 1 to reload initd with your new terminal configuration. On 10/21/07, Dave Burns [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Trying to RTFM, but can't seem to find the right FMTR. I've installed fedora on a dell. I want to unplug the monitor at least, maybe keyboard and mouse also, and have it still boot. I tried just unplugging the monitor, but it will not boot that way as currently configured. Googling indicates that the bios is the big deal, but my bios doesn't seem to mention anything about whether or not to expect a monitor or mouse etc. How do I figure out what bios it uses so I can go to their web page for more details? Further, since I used the GUI to set up the machine, it is currently set up to start X and gnome or whatever on boot. Don't I need to change something so it won't even try to start all that up? Should I just tell it to boot to runlevel 1? Will it talk through the serial port without me nudging it somehow? I'm sure this must exist somewhere on the net, somehow I am not finding it. Mahalo in advance for any pointers. Dave ___ LUAU@lists.hosef.org mailing list http://lists.hosef.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luau ___ LUAU@lists.hosef.org mailing list http://lists.hosef.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luau
Re: [LUAU] headless fedora
Dave Burns wrote: Trying to RTFM, but can't seem to find the right FMTR. I've installed fedora on a dell. I want to unplug the monitor at least, maybe keyboard and mouse also, and have it still boot. I tried just unplugging the monitor, but it will not boot that way as currently configured. Googling indicates that the bios is the big deal, but my bios doesn't seem to mention anything about whether or not to expect a monitor or mouse etc. How do I figure out what bios it uses so I can go to their web page for more details? Further, since I used the GUI to set up the machine, it is currently set up to start X and gnome or whatever on boot. Don't I need to change something so it won't even try to start all that up? Should I just tell it to boot to runlevel 1? Will it talk through the serial port without me nudging it somehow? I'm sure this must exist somewhere on the net, somehow I am not finding it. Mahalo in advance for any pointers. Dave ___ LUAU@lists.hosef.org mailing list http://lists.hosef.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luau Your bios should have a setting for halt on no errors. Setting the box bios to halt on no errors will allow for a headless server. I see this all the time done successfully no matter what the OS is. ~Al Plant - Honolulu, Hawaii - Phone: 808-284-2740 + http://hawaiidakine.com + http://freebsdinfo.org + [EMAIL PROTECTED] + + http://internetohana.org - Supporting - FreeBSD 6.* - 7.* + All that's really worth doing is what we do for others.- Lewis Carrol ___ LUAU@lists.hosef.org mailing list http://lists.hosef.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luau
Re: [LUAU] headless fedora
Halt on all but keyboard works for me on most cheap mobos. Dells usually use a Phoenix bios, IIRC. Or, at least they used to - they might have their own now. The features inside could be very different from machine to machine. Support.dell.com http://support.dell.com/and the Service Tag on your machine are your friends. I don't know any video adaptors that care if a monitor is connected. Ideally, most Dell servers natively support console redirection - if yours doesn't and you want the serial console google search for linux serial console or similar for your console redirection. You will want to configure your bootloader AND runtime kernel config. Someone step in if i'm wrong but one allows you to see the bootloader over serial and the other allows the linux kernel. So, for /etc/grub.conf add something like: serial --unit=0 --speed=9600 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1 terminal --timeout=10 serial console And change your kernel runtime options (do for every boot config you want it to work on): kernel /vmlinuz ro root=LABEL=/ console=ttyS0,9600n8 You may have to fix grub.conf after a kernel upgrade, depending on how smart the update specs are nowadays. Should a kernel update break it, your bootloader should still work over the serial and you can run your old config or just edit the runtime options interactively - snazzy. Run level 1 is single-user mode, run level 3 is text-only. Edit /etc/inittab and change id:5:initdefault: to id:3:initdefault: to change the default. Aloha and good luck. On 10/21/07, Dave Burns [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Trying to RTFM, but can't seem to find the right FMTR. I've installed fedora on a dell. I want to unplug the monitor at least, maybe keyboard and mouse also, and have it still boot. I tried just unplugging the monitor, but it will not boot that way as currently configured. Googling indicates that the bios is the big deal, but my bios doesn't seem to mention anything about whether or not to expect a monitor or mouse etc. How do I figure out what bios it uses so I can go to their web page for more details? Further, since I used the GUI to set up the machine, it is currently set up to start X and gnome or whatever on boot. Don't I need to change something so it won't even try to start all that up? Should I just tell it to boot to runlevel 1? Will it talk through the serial port without me nudging it somehow? I'm sure this must exist somewhere on the net, somehow I am not finding it. Mahalo in advance for any pointers. Dave ___ LUAU@lists.hosef.org mailing list http://lists.hosef.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luau ___ LUAU@lists.hosef.org mailing list http://lists.hosef.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luau
Re: [LUAU] headless fedora
Mahalo everyone for the helpful suggestions. But I'm still not clear on what area of expertise I should be polishing here - init, X, bios? Headless servers are probably more standard than headly ones, is it really so simple that no one has bothered to write a specific howto? I must be missing something big. Turn off gdm, xdm or kdm service Hmm, they're not really services, are they? At least, don't show up in /etc/rc.d or chkconfig --list. Could it be this entry in /etc/inittab? grep dm /etc/inittab # Run xdm in runlevel 5 x:5:once:/etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon Yeah, apparently so: ps -ef|grep -e 2654 -e 2638 root 2638 1 0 00:19 ?00:00:00 /bin/sh /etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon root 2654 2638 0 00:19 ?00:00:00 /usr/sbin/gdm-binary -nodaemon root 2730 2654 0 00:19 ?00:00:00 /usr/sbin/gdm-binary -nodaemon So I just comment out that line in inittab (to prevent gdm-binary from getting started)? Then, since I am rather lazy, I am hoping sshd will come up and I won't really have to struggle with the serial port stuff. At least, not right away. Dave ___ LUAU@lists.hosef.org mailing list http://lists.hosef.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luau
Re: [LUAU] headless fedora
I am a little unclear now - what isn't working? You can not worry about disabling gdm. Disabling the display manager has nothing to do with headless operation. If your default runlevel is 3, prefdm (and thus gdm) this will not be run. There is no need to comment the line out from inittab. It's not an especially responsible to rely totally on sshd on a headless server - should the network be down, fail, or you screw it up. For example, the serial console doesn't care if you flush iptables and forget to change the default rule to allow. I personally preffer KVMs. If you must use only sshd, be sure to make sure it and your network settings are set before going headless. On 10/21/07, Dave Burns [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Mahalo everyone for the helpful suggestions. But I'm still not clear on what area of expertise I should be polishing here - init, X, bios? Headless servers are probably more standard than headly ones, is it really so simple that no one has bothered to write a specific howto? I must be missing something big. Turn off gdm, xdm or kdm service Hmm, they're not really services, are they? At least, don't show up in /etc/rc.d or chkconfig --list. Could it be this entry in /etc/inittab? grep dm /etc/inittab # Run xdm in runlevel 5 x:5:once:/etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon Yeah, apparently so: ps -ef|grep -e 2654 -e 2638 root 2638 1 0 00:19 ?00:00:00 /bin/sh /etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon root 2654 2638 0 00:19 ?00:00:00 /usr/sbin/gdm-binary -nodaemon root 2730 2654 0 00:19 ?00:00:00 /usr/sbin/gdm-binary -nodaemon So I just comment out that line in inittab (to prevent gdm-binary from getting started)? Then, since I am rather lazy, I am hoping sshd will come up and I won't really have to struggle with the serial port stuff. At least, not right away. Dave ___ LUAU@lists.hosef.org mailing list http://lists.hosef.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luau ___ LUAU@lists.hosef.org mailing list http://lists.hosef.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/luau
