How to install Linux on a headless server?

[linuxpyro]

Hello, I am planning to build a new Linux server, to run Apache, MySQL, and a few other servers. I would like to make this a headless server, without a monitor, keyboard, mouse, floppy, or CD-ROM drive, as I'm not going to be using it for anything else, and I want to save resources.

I know this can be done, yet after Googling around a bit I haven't found anything useful on how to actually install Linux on a headless box. I believe that with some distros (Debian?) you can actually configure the box via telnet, but I'm not sure how to get this working. Couldn't I just stick a distro on the harddrive I'll be using and maybe configure it via a serial port?

Thanks for any help with this. On a slightly off-topic note, where can I find a basic motherboard, without a lot of stuff built in? Most mobos I see now have onboard audio, video, or whatever.

 

[franklin97355]

You can configure the headless box but you need a running distro on it before you do. There are ways to load a distro using terminal server booting the box from ROM but that may be more work than you want to tackle.

 

[iSeriesCodePoet]

You can install the lastest version of Fedora via VNC, however, you still need keyboard and monitor to type in the commands to get it to work.

iSeriesCodePoet
iSeries Programmer/Lawson Software Administrator

http://www.koldark.net

See my progress to converting to linux.

http://linux.koldark.net

 

[linuxpyro]

I think I'm going to try configuring the box via a serial port. I'm thinking I can just connect a floppy drive up, create a net-install image on a floppy, and install say RedHat remotely. Does that sound ok? Anyone tried this? Thanks for the responses.

 

[jaymzter]

to the best of my knowlege, Solaris will install over a serial port, but Linux will not. Of course, I got that from a Solaris bigot

 

[unixfreak]

Of course linux can install over a serial port.

Debain is the only one that does it out of the box though. What you need to do is change the boot floppy that comes with the distro you want to install.

You need to tell the boot loader to use the serial port which in LILO is done with:

serial = 0,9600n8

and in syslinux with:

serial 0 9600

In syslinux I believe it has to be the first line in the configuration file. IF you're using another loader, read the documentation.

After that, your bootloader must pass kernel parameters that tells the kernel to use a serial console. If you're using LILO add a line like append="console=ttyS0". There should be a similar line in syslinux but I can't remember exactly what it looks like.

P.S. I think Solaris is crap

Cheers
Henrik Morsing

 

[jaymzter]

More on the above comment here:

http://www.telenovela-world.com/~spade/linux/howto/Remote-Serial-Console-HOWTO/rhbootdisk.html

very cool

 

[linuxpyro]

I'll give that a whirl. So this will simply allow me to configure the box via the serial port? I was going to use RedHat 8. I'll let you guys know how it works out; thanks for the response!