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Running Old Desktops Headless?
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."
I use Gentoo; how does this affect me?
use a USB/serial adapter.
The question about bios settings is a good one though, and I don't know.
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.
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.
Most of the Dell and IBM servers I've used will let you get to the BIOS/GRUB over a serial console with some configuration, but I've never seen a desktop motherboard that would do it. If you really care about power consumption the easiest route is probably to buy a cheap, low-power itx board that has VGA built in and skip the console altogether. Plus, that way you don't need a laptop to talk to the box, just an old monitor.
Anyone know some tricks to get serial console to work with grub on a desktop mobo?
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
The obvious answer is to not get it into a state where the network fails.
You mention servers which are designed to run headless, but that isn't really true. Many servers are just basic machines with or without video output but are hosted too far away to easily see the screen. Remote access systems like Dell RAC/HP ILO are still fairly rare, in my experience.
Its been a few years since I broke a server badly enough to need to see the screen. Silly iptables.
If that box and another both have serial connections, then use the serial console: Get a null-modem cable. Connect that to another box. Make sure the you add console=ttyS0,19200n8 or some variation to the append line in your grub entries. On the client side use cu aka tip, minicom or PuTTY to make the serial connection, making sure that bps, parity and stop bits match.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Make a script like this (pseudocode FTW):
If (hasBootedButWithoutFunctionalNetworkng()){ //so that it'll boot via PXE (takes a functional OS image from the network, with a sane SSH implementation)
removeTheGRUB();
reboot();
}
BTW, you need to have a PXE (DHCP + TFTP) server on the network, and to configure the BIOS to boot from netwok if it can't find a bootable HDD. Also, a CDROM as first-boot-priority helps... a lot (you can make/read backups, boot from a LiveCD with a SSH daemon)
You can try to get a USB device card, configure kernel to act as serial-over-USB, and set mingetty or something to allow login on this tty port. But it won't display anything until kernel boots.
Also you could get a usb-rs232 converter and attach it to server's COM port. It perhaps has one or two...
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...
Intro
PCI version exists, idea is that it emulates a VGA card and passes it via the serial.
Keyboard & Video supported through the card.
They have a demo to play with (or at least they did at one point).
The only major thing I can see against it: $350 for the PCI version. ($250 for ISA) on their order page (and the cert @ the order page seems to have expired)
They ARE still available, and for as little as $15. USB/serial port adapters do work for outgoing connections from a laptop or PC, but you will probably need an adapter card for the 'server' if it does not have a serial port.
There are a variety of 7" size USB monitors available now, can't remember the company who makes them...Would be perfect for running shell only.
Either you use a serial console or buy special, expensive hardware that emulates the video card and keyboard. Well, if you're lucky, you can get some used remote administration cards relatively cheap off eBay, but they might require at least some cooperation from the mainboard, or be designed for some particular type of server hardware and might not work with what you have.
As for PCs without a serial port, you could try a USB to serial converter. I'm almost certain it won't work with the builtin kernel-level serial console mode, but should be fine with mingetty spawned from inittab (there should be a commented out example entry in your inittab, take a look), as long as the relevant kernel modules get loaded early enough - so just compile them in to be sure. When looking for the converter itself, try to get one based on an FT232 or Prolific PL2303 chip.
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
KVM over IP might be what you're looking for.
KVM over IP Network Card
I've never done business with this company. I just googled and took the first link.
load "$",8,1
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.
Put the card back in, get everything working and set up to boot to runlevel3 (networking, no GUI), and then remove the card. After that you can SSH in to your hearts content. Why jump through a hoop of fire when you can more easily walk around it?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
How about having a tested Live CD or other recovery disk that will boot the machine and get it on the network? If the machine ever fails to boot due to a local config problem, then you can boot off the CD, log in remotely and then manually mount the local partitions in order to fix problems.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
If you had rs-232 ports on both machines, a calbee and a null modem will establish a physical connection that can be read by any number of programs. I wonder if the same could be done with bluetooth if an adaptor canb be f found for the older machine.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
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!
"Lame" - Galaxar
Aeons ago I built myself a small ISA card with just a 2K EPROM on it that redirected video BIOS calls to an ANSI terminal over serial port. It also stuffed received keys in the BIOS ring buffer. A speed of 38400 allowed a smooth transition BIOS -> LILO (no GRUB at that time) -> Linux console.
These days it may be possible to use a network card with a boot ROM socket.
Some mobos worked with this card to change CMOS settings because they used BIOS calls to display the menus. Newer ones seem too colorful and flashy to not require direct video memory access and some also have mouse support that would be difficult and slow to support over BIOS calls.
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.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Use a live CD distro (I use Damn Small Linux) as a starting point for building the boot image but most do not allow you to SSH in so you will have to customise the image a little to ensure that sshd is running and that you have an account that you can ssh login to that has sudo/su access.
You should be able to figure out where your BIOS parameters are stored in the battery backed CMOS RAM and make a backup that you can later restore via the PXE booted image if your BIOS settings get lost.
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 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).
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
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....
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
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 missing e-mail that a client had insisted was stuck in our server.
This machine is an hour's drive from the office, and the support techs at the IDC took almost 30minutes to get up from their desks and walk down the corridor to push the power button. Talk about service. It is literally a five minute job!
When I phoned my colleague who was responsible for the server I said "Guess what I just did!?"
He laughed and joked "Probably shut down the mailserver?"
When I confirmed he responded "*groan* I forgot to alias that command! Sure I aliased poweroff, but not shutdown!"
Good Times.
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
There are some new external video cards that don't require anything but drivers and a USB port, such as the EVGA UV Plus. AFAIK, all USB video cards use a DisplayLink chipset, and there are rudimentary drivers here. It's not a very elegant solution, but if you want to use any sort of GUI, this should work.
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 #
There is little point in using USB since it requires that at least the kernel has started and the USB devices can be detected.
Usually if you get to that point the system is OK.
Some years ago I added a device like this to a BSD box that I used as a NFS server in my home network. There are several projects like this available in internet using different microcontrollers. Simply map the terminal push buttons to perform some useful commands (like starting a safe reboot script), and you have an emergency exit for your box. You might also try this: start a VNC server on your box at boot time, and set up as well a network connection using either the serial port or better a USB port (using usbnet). This should allow you to access the system X display through USB/serial. I am afraid however that there is not an easy solution for accessing remotely the BIOS screen before the OS starts.
1. Throw it to trashbin
2. Buy any NAS
3. Save fortune on power consumption
4. When it fail, you wouldn't need graphic card either
http://www.coreboot.org if your motherboard is supported
I'm all for green stuff, recycling, etc, but P4's were incredibly power hungry processors. A new low power dual core will be faster while drawing draw 50% or less power than that old P4, and pay itself in less than one year thanks to lower bills. Especially if it stays up 24/7 since you wrote it would be used as a server.
And buy one Sheeva Plug Computer http://www.marvell.com/featured/plugcomputing.jsp. I bought one and now I save about 245 W per hour. I love this wonderful machine. I have an apache/mysql/webcam, mldonkey, bittorrent, ssh, samba, print server and nfs services and run fine!
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
http://www.realweasel.com/
Love the landing page- product is kinda pricey though..
There's even an online demo, though, it's a little touch and go sometimes.
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 to you.
For around $350 you can get a card that has serial console output, but appears to the PC as a simple VGA card (Real Weasel), although for that price you could buy any number of other things to replace your P4.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
build a hardware switch mounted outside the case to disable the video card.
in case of network or other error turn off machine flick switch to re-enable and power on, after maintenance repeat to disable.
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 . . . .
Provides remote access to your device even if IP and firewall configuration settings are defunct http://nuwiki.openwrt.org/inbox/ead
Since when did people start considering P4 machines "old?" I can do almost everything on my P4 desktop that I can do on my Core2Duo laptop, save for some higher-end graphics rendering. The P4 chip is not slow, by any means. P3, sure. but P4? Please. Kids today are incredibly spoiled. Get off my lawn, etc etc.
Related to the topic, it would be trivial to configure console login via the serial port. Since this P4 is so "old," it should have a serial port. OpenBSD provides an option for serial login during the install. Many linux distributions do as well.
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 what we are looking for. I couldnt really find any simple solution for the problem. The serial to ethernet seems interesting but i dont know if that exists. Most boot problems seem to originate with the Linux boot up process and filesystem scans but these may be rectified with the new filesystems. Once control has been passed to Linux from the BIOS, it really should be possible for linux to run some sort of ssh service to allow access even while the kernel is still booting. Maybe a solution that would require a hardware level addition is to allow BIOS settings to be modified from the OS after boot.
You could use any of the various server-based out-of-band management solutions, but only if your MB supports them. The trick here is that they will use more power than your AGP card, or a PCI FIFO card, and will cost FAR more than either of these other solutions. Is that really what you want?
Attaching a terminal to a serial port is the way to go, it's easy and effective. If your computer doesn't have a conventional serial port on it, there are USB-to-serial dongles which will create a serial port for you - I'd imagine modern Linux supports this (BSD did ~5 years ago when I used this solution for embedded installations).
Get an AMI MegaRAC, Dell DRAC or similar. They plug into the PCI bus and provide a java console over separate ethernet. Also have hooks to power/reset the system remotely. Servers use IPMI for similar, but these PCI cards are as close as you'll get for a desktop.
As you said, when you try to order one, it says, "The security certificate presented by this website has expired or is not yet valid. "
Very interesting, if it were $30.
If his intent is to 'just make it work', this is the way to go. I've built LTSP style rigs going back to the days of KDE 1.x and 486's/Pentiums; good initial set-up and ssh have served. Once the BIOS settings are solid, there is little reason to go mucking there again.
http://www.mimomonitors.com/ 7" LCD, 800x480, USB monitor Pretty sure there's a Linux driver for it somewhere, too lazy to look. I'm also too lazy to see if someone else already mentioned this idea.
Just put the video card back in. If you're not doing 3D you won't draw much power. 2D requires a lot less juice than the 3D modes, and I expect the console mode to use a lot less than an X session.
And there's no other way to manage the BIOS. Servers made to run headless have extra hardware to redirect BIOS access over the serial port. An old desktop can not do it.
Network Console on Acid.
Typical self-defeating open-source project title. *grin*
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.
The cake is a pie
PCI Video card.
If your kernal stops booting/working. Serial/USB/potatoes/onions, or anything else you want isn't going to work. (Short of expensive and useless additional hardware that you don't want).
Put in a floppy drive, make a boot floppy with network card driver that will allow you to terminal into the machine mount your drive and fix whatever you messed up. Push the floppy in all the way and reboot to recover.
Depending on the bios, you could also use a bootable cdrom that had you 'hit space' while the computer is booting etc (write it down on a post-it note! what to hit and when).
No other solution will replace a local video card/keyboard.
If your network card stops working? Well being able to shell in via TTY on a serial port won't fix it anyhow.
Hi,
/etc/inittab. Just make sure that the USB to serial adapter module is loaded BEFORE init runs. The most easy way could be to have the driver included NOT as a module, but directly in the kernel.
I just wanted you to take care that, with the PCI standard, the average slot (AGP, PCI, etc.) is designed to withstand only 15 insertions minimym. That means that if you constantly plug and unplug your video board to save a bit of power, sooner or later, your connector will die.
As for the USB, there are very inexpensive USB to serial adapters. As much as I know, these are in the very standard that was out when the first USB 1 went out, and almost (if not all) USB serial adapter will work smoothly in Linux. The only issue is that, to run this, you will need a kernel driver. So I don't think you will be able to actually see anything with it when at the grub prompt. Your only hope here might be a modified BIOS. Maybe you could look at open source BIOS replacement to do this trick, I don't know if there's even a solution here. What I know is that getty (or mingetty, depending on your distribution) WILL work with any serial adapter, including USB ones, by simply tweaking
I hope that helps.
Having no screen could be seen as analogous of being blind (ok, you can see the keyboard) Maybe some of the existing solutions for blind people in linux could do the work. Else you could get creative with the speaker and the command prompt (i.e. 2 beeps if last command returned non-zero :)
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.
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
Even though a machine may not have Serial ports on the mother board it could still have them. Most motherboards will have a connector to plug in a serial port interface. You just need to get a interface for it, they are pretty easy to find. No PCI card needed.
First off, most machines won't boot without a video card -- you get the repeating three beeps, and that's it. The reason is that you can't set the bios without video. So that's two out of three requirements shot in the head.
But why spend 15 or even 12 watts on something so ancient as a soekris or VIA or Atom? My PogoPlug (or Sheevaplug) runs Fedora or Debian at 1.2GHz at FOUR watts, and costs $99 new. Runs NFS, Samba, whatever.
Take that old P4 and put it where it belongs: In an Indonesian toxic waste dump, where people are mutating third eyes.
If the point is to re-use the old P4, then get a low power PCI video card. If the point is to have a low power server to play with, get something like this: http://www.mwave.com/mwave/skusearch_v3.asp?scriteria=BA25456. Can be found else were, not giving props to MWave. Or if a dual core system is wanted, get this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856167037.
Just need to add memory (SO-DIMM DDR2) and a HD. I went with the first as the single core Atom uses about 3.5 watts less than the dual core. I also went with two WD "green" HDs. It should pull about 50 watts when up and running.
So, how would one access one of these?
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Similar price to the PC Weasel, single-port KVM over IP:
http://www.lantronix.com/it-management/kvm-over-ip/securelinx-spider.html
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..
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..."
I remember a few years ago I found one of my old P3 computers hiding in a basement and turned it into a network storage / linux router. I would off load time intensive stuff to it so my desktop wouldn't be as bogged down while I was gaming. Well, one day I was SSH'd into it and it was going really slow, and then it stopped responding all together. So I went to my basement to investigate.... It turned out the reason it wasn't responding was that the old power supply on the P3 had caught fire. Nothing too serious, I could only see the smoke coming out of it. I just unplugged everything an moved it outside to cool off. Anyways, the point is, make sure you clean it up before using it! Get all that dust and crud out before you set it up and forget about it. I suppose that probably goes left unsaid, but honestly I neglected to, so I suppose others could forget/be too lazy too.
I have a Sun SPARCStation/IPX running Solaris 7. The 20" monitor died, so that is a headless system.
If the machine doesn't have a serial port, you could use a USB serial port and plug it in when necessary.
If the network is down but the ethernet port still works you could try a crossover network cable connected to a laptop.
Leaving out the video card is a good idea if you can, the power requirement will be reduced. If you're into hardware hacking you could add a switch to the video card power bus line and leave the card in the box.
the best AGP card that can be purchased is a 7300.
I have a 7600GS AGP in my AMD 64... and i'm sure you can get better than that but I can't remember which... IIRC its a card in the ATI HD range...
But yeah, if the AGP card is worth something, sell it, semi-powerful AGP cards are getting harder and harder to find...
More to the point re: power savings -- can you in fact shut down most of the video? -- how much power are we talking about?
I understand that when a high end gpu is loaded up it sucks down power like no tomorrow -- but how much does it burn at idle?
Assuming you don't boot X, can you put the graphics card to sleep pending a keypress?
1. Bios setup through serial console -- the great majority of motherboards do not support this -- but you might try LinuxBios (now known as coreboot) http://coreboot.org/ supports serial console.
2. A number of non-server Asus "enthusiast" boards do support remote/serial console I believe the A7N8-X did, and a few others - check, you might get lucky.
2. Serial support -- most medium old desktops kept a single serial port on the motherboard -- many systems didn't pin these out -- but check your manual and scrounge for old serial header to d-sub slot fillers.
3. People mentioning laptops re: lack of serial ports -- this is a discussion about headless desktops -- keep your mind on the problem and solutions and stop spitballing -- laptops don't go headless.
4. If it's a desktop without serial ports put in an add in card. Hopefully a common one that the kernel and grub will both be able to see (and presumably coreboot if you go that route for bios level serial)
I would not recommend trying to work out USB -> Serial for your console -- you'll almost certainly not be able to make it work with grub (pending some savant deciding to add PL203 support to grub)
Again -- how much power are you saving by going absolutely headless? Did you measure? I've generally assumed load from AGP card at rest is minimal -- am I wrong?
- Jeff Dodge
... USB monitors exist. Small, not terribly effective for 3D rendering, but they work well for anything you'd be doing in an emergency like you described. Asus makes some, as does MIMO (and theirs are touch-capable, some with webcams). They're all run off of a single USB plug (two if your ports are underpowered) and have respectable resolutions.
#include <disclaimer.h>
#include <beer.h>
There are several ways you can do this. Since you want to get in the BIOS on boot time as well, this gets trickier than just a serial console.
1) Re-attach a cheap video card (PCI will do)
2) Use a networked KVM (internal or external). I have had really good experiences with the eRIC KVM switches from Raritan but there are several available, even an open source one (okvm.sf.net). There are also some external ones that are great although they are usually geared at connecting multiple machines. So depending on your future plans, you can get either.
3) Get/have a server motherboard with IPMI (most recent (2-5 yo) rackmountable servers do have these)
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
USB to serial convertor works just fine. I use it on headless PC's and Sun Netras
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
John 8:32(King James Version)
you've already lost the power battle. Just leave a video card in it.
The beginning of your post sounds like you are talking about a specific machine of yours, then you seem to be asking about machines in general. Which is it? For your P4, the answer to the serial port question is, 'does it have a serial port?' If so, use it. Most P4s should have one. My core 2 still does. Not sure why you 'wouldn't be able to get on the network' that you built a NFS server for.. And generally, for headless servers, you set your BIOS to how you need it and forget it. What changes do you need to make continually?
Linux is pretty solid. If you can get the box to power on you shouldn't have any problems booting up and sshd should be dutifully there waitin for ya. If your not confident the machine can boot reliably, you probably shouldn't use it for a file server.
You could always go with a DisplayLink monitor, it lets you push an image over USB. Someone did this on a router with openWRT installed: http://sven.killig.de/openwrt/slugterm_dl.html
It's a P4 desktop.... so presumably it isn't designed for headless use on the mobo/BIOS behaviour.... Haven't seen this mentioned yet - but part of the POST sequence is initialising video and most boards will fail POST with no video interface... even if it was an old ISA/PCI card... which pretty much makes all this moot.
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.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Assuming the PS/2 interface still works, you can still log in locally and work blind. It's a little slower, because you have to stop and think more about what you're doing (e.g., tab completion is a good deal less useful), but if you know what you're doing you CAN make it work. Back in the days *before* convenient networking, I used to occasionally have to work blind when a monitor was out for some reason, most commonly to copy files to a floppy disk so I could take them to another computer. Like I said, you have to stop and think, but if you know the system you *can* do it. You don't need to see the output. You can mostly predict what the output is going to be, and if you *do* need to verify some command's output for some reason you can pipe it into a very short Perl script and make it beep once for yes or twice for no, or if worst comes to worst cat the output onto a floppy disk and take it to another computer to analyze.
HTH.HAND.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Simple.
If you have some money to throw at it, here are a few solutions:
THE solution, that completely solves all your problems, is to get a serial video card: http://www.realweasel.com/ It emulates a VGA card, and spews out all the text over a serial port. As long as you never go into graphics mode, it's the whole solution.... But it's kind of expensive.
Second to that: Throw away the desktop motherboard. Buy a whitebox server motherboard (Tyan, SuperMicro, etc), and the BIOS will support serial access. ... But it's kind of expensive.
Next option: IP-KVM adapter. There are plenty of these available that plug into a VGA port and the PS2 keyboard port, and will let you control it via VNC or similar. Works great! But it's kind of expensive.
But personally, I think your entire premise is broken:
old P4 that is in fine working order
No, it's not. By pure virtue of being a P4, the performance per watt is miserable by current standards. It's fine if you just want to experiment, but if you want to actually have a server that you're running 24x7, THROW IT AWAY. I know this is hard to accept, but the fact is, you can buy either a low-power ITX motherboard with an Atom processor for around $70, which will do everything you need in a home server in under 20 watts at idle, or buy a current generation MicroATX motherboard + low end Phenom for about $150, which will draw somewhat less power and completely trounce the P4's performance.
Too lazy to google for your answers, ignoring man and saying you know all about that stuff but you ask anyway. You sound more like an Ubuntu Fanbois, First Class.
Search your local cleanups for motherboards with integrated gfx.
Or find some really old PCI vga videos cards on cleanups.
The key here isn't so much power usage. It's reliability.
And you DON'T want a card that needs a fan or large heatsinks.
A cool running old pci card (s3 trio, ati mach64 etc) is going
to still last longer than a hot running card with or without a
heatsink (eg nvidia 5200 etc)
Use a cheap vga switcher to switch between multiple boxes.
This method is best for quick local logins & maintinance.
When your machine has a problem, you don't want to be
rooting round with serial links etc.
I was in a similar situation a while ago, and maybe my experience can help you. :)
My home server (P4, by the way) was running headless and I was afraid I can lock myself out (wrong iptables rule or something) or the IP address settings could get screwed up, etc. etc. I don't even have a monitor, so inserting the graphics card back in isn't an option.
The solution was a USB thumb drive I had, and a modified udev script for mass storage, so it would execute a shell script with a particular name from the root folder of the drive. If something did get screwed up, you just open your text editor, write the commands to be executed, and save it on your flash drive. You even can redirect standard output to a file on the drive.
It kept me safe for years, although if udev can't start, you may have a problem
Do what I did...I ran a headless Mepis file server. For the very few times I needed access it when I couldn't use SSH for some reason, I plugged a monitor and keyboard into for 10 minutes. When I bought an new LCD panel, I found that I could plug the HDMI into my desktop, and the VGA into the server and swap back and forth using the digital/analog button. So I plugged in a second keyboard and just kept it on top of the server.
.. right??). Then put the AGP card back in, plug a keyboard and monitor in, fix it, then take it back out again.
Keep your video card, and the next time you can't get to the server via the network, press the power button and let it cycle down (you did configure it that way
Everything else sounds just way to complicated if you aren't willing/unable to use a serial port for the 1 time a year you will need to do this.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Or cheat - take pictures of the BIOS screens and Photoshop the required key presses to get to each option. Learn what makes the bios BEEP, and make it beep if you get lost to figure out where you are. Timing is everything. Using this method you only need attach a keyboard if your boot fails. Jonadab made a good point about having the scripts beep (or play tones i suppose would work as well) - but if you manually assign an IP address to a network interface on your headless box, as long as the machine actually boots you shouldn't have a problem with getting in through SSH. Just remember that some file systems enjoy wasting time by checking themselves every X days or boots or whatever, and you'll save yourself some frustration. another thing to consider is replacing the motherboard for like $10 with one that has an on board video solution, and only dedicating 7-8 megs of system ram to it. That's how i run my "spare" servers, and i have a bunch of monitors with dual inputs to switch back and forth.
You can forget everything about BIOS access, BIOS is designed to be accessed from the console, there are workarounds on IBM and HP servers (supervisor boards) but not on standard motherboards. Real UNIX boxes, like DEC Alpha systems, got "BIOS" access thru the serial ports if they got a PC like BIOS.
You could consider a PCI display adapter (an old Matrox would be perfect).
btw. you do know that PC motherboards are not happy with booting without an display adapter and many will just not boot ?
I don't know if an USB port may be used as a serial console but I do know that You can buy serial adapters for the PCI bus.
Until one day when the CMOS battery dies, and after a power outage, the system no longer boots correctly (or no longer auto-recovers from power outage).
Hmm...
> Butterflies. What the OP needs are butterflies.
> http://xkcd.com/378/
XKCD doesn't seem to know emacs key chords very well. C-x M-c doesn't do anything useful....
Curiously enough
M-x butterfly
does amazing physics.
;;;###autoload
(defun butterfly ()
"Use butterflies to flip the desired bit on the drive platter.
Open hands and let the delicate wings flap once. The disturbance
ripples outward, changing the flow of the eddy currents in the
upper atmosphere. These cause momentary pockets of higher-pressure
air to form, which act as lenses that deflect incoming cosmic rays,
focusing them to strike the drive platter and flip the desired bit.
You can type `M-x butterfly C-M-c' to run it. This is a permuted
variation of `C-x M-c M-butterfly' from url `http://xkcd.com/378/'."
(interactive)
(if (yes-or-no-p "Do you really want to unleash the powers of the butterfly? ")
(progn
(switch-to-buffer (get-buffer-create "*butterfly*"))
(erase-buffer)
(sit-for 0)
(setq indent-tabs-mode nil)
(animate-string "Amazing physics going on..."
(/ (window-height) 2) (- (/ (window-width) 2) 12))
(sit-for (* 5 (/ (abs (random)) (float most-positive-fixnum))))
(message "Successfully flipped one bit!"))
(message "Well, then go to xkcd.com!")
(browse-url "http://xkcd.com/378/")))
Almost more, ahh, umm, curious is the existence of...
M-x animate-birthday-present
I'm using a fairly recent "bleeding edge" version of emacs, so your mileage may vary substantially.
Did anyone else read that as NSFW server, or is it just me?
...for a question that, had the poster not been so lazy, could have had answered with a quick Google search? The descent of Slashdot quickens, and after 13 years, I'm beginning to think that Slashdot has outlived its usefulness.
This guy is too cheap to just install a front panel?
I used to program an RCA 501 using a front panel. Not even a Teletype was attached.
http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61-0784.jpg
The machine had a grand total of 40K - K, not Meg! - of actual CORE - magnetic CORE - memory! And it weighed about 20,000 pounds.
Young whippersnappers, these days! Nobody wantsa work!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Windows Server 2008 Enterprise R2
Sadly, I think these guys have packed up shop, but this would be what you're after:
http://www.realweasel.com/
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 that I used would fail if the USB device was disconnected while RS-232 communication was occurring, and then reconnected again. To recover, Windows XP either had to be rebooted, or the USB port reassigned to a different COM port number. A reboot for a USB driver???
Also, many older specialty programs won't work with USB serial ports. Essentially, Microsoft slightly changed the behavior of the polled mode ReadFile/WriteFile calls, so USB serial ports behave differently than built-in serial ports. This breaks old software.
USB serial ports under Windows for antiquated embedded / real-time applications can be a real nightmare. The only success I had at high baud rates was with the FTDI chipset and drivers. Even they, broke old software, and required a reboot if the USB device was unplugged during communications.
And you are worried about Linux driver support? I'm pretty sure that this is one of those cases where Linux works better than Windows.
You seek PC Weasel.
http://www.realweasel.com/intro.html
and not just repair shops, but the next cleanout is getting closer......
http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/usb-gadgets/bfa3/
USB mini monitor from think geek? Has it's own built in video card.
Does it have USB 2.0?
http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/usb-graphic-adapter-makes-adding-multiple-monitors-a-breeze-2008064/
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).
I host a Virtualbox VM Running windows XP in it. Then I use RDP to connect to the VM from my MacOS workstation to run the one windows application.
i just put in
Rib boards were designed for this exact situation. compaq makes them dont know anyone else off the top of my head that does. they were designed for servers and data centers. i believe it has an ethernet serial and one other port. you need 2 of them tho one for the unit you want to watch and the other for the unit that is watching it.do some research.
if you want i have a couple rib cards i would throw your way for $20 for the pair plus shipping.
if you want them reply to luciferxf @ gmail
Soekris
Or even kurobox (or, if you read Japanese, here).
And there are other such devices around that allow you to escape the x86 world.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
The OP indicates he's interested in saving power.
Power costs, especially in areas like where I live, can cover the cost of a dedicated small box like the Soekris boxes, or like Buffalos boxes (see Kurobox at wikipedia) et. al. in just a year or two.
(And, yeah, a year or two goes quickly, especially since those boxes need practically no maintenance once they're in place.)
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
and if you're looking to escape the x86 world, there are other options, like Buffalo's Kurobox (here if you read Japanese).
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
I think you are being ripped off at 15cents. My electricity is at 4cents per kw hour. My home is heated and cooled by electricity. We in Montreal Quebec are spoiled I guess, but with electricity in abundance, we have been encourated to move away from oil or gas heat to it Our electricity is water dam generated power. In winter any heat expended by the PC displaces the heat provided from baseboard heaters. Summer is when we are outdoors more (long hours of daylight), so the PC is used less often.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
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
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.
All recent and new Dell servers are designed to run headless.
They actually have (gasp!) working management interfaces! You can have your head, with some keyboard and feature availability in a browser window, yes, even Firefox.
Leverage the intelligent platform management interface with 'ipmitool' for even greater control!
Things are actually progressing, though it has taken the better part of ten years..
Why remove the AGP card? Just let the card enter "sleep" mode (don't know enough about Linux to give details) and it will draw next to no power as long as the keyboard/mouse aren't in use. Most newer LCD monitors have a secondary (VGA or DVI) connector, so you don't even have to fiddle with cabling if you need to tweak BIOS settings; just switch inputs and away you go. Would work great with a KVM switch that way, too.
Be aware that there are two different pinouts for the serial port header. The first is for cable wired as in the parent-linked figure. The second is for mass-terminated cable.
One of the reasons the photo has the back off of the DB-9, so you can see what the actual the pinouts are.
To paraphrase Louis Agassiz, "Go to the catalog; take the cables into your own hands; look, and see the pinouts for yourself!"
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
My OpenLDAP + Mail server is an old HP/Compaq Laptop, it has SSH and webmin running for remote admin which suffices 99% of the time. For the other 1% it sits on a dedicated shelve under the desk so is hooked up to my main monitor, mouse and keyboard via KVM anyway. The advatage of using an old lappy is that it's already low power (12v wall wart), has a built-in uninterruptile power supply (the battery is only good for about 20 mins as it's old, but it'll survive a brown out or human tripping the mains), takes up barley any space and by removing the built in screen, keyboard, floppy and dvd drives to expose the heatsink and make lots of holes it also runs cool and quiet. Granted you can hear the hard drive spinning ... if you actually stick your head under the desk!
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
I used to do the same..... then I grew up.
bios? nope forget it. everything else is fine thru SSH (even X). your asking certain questions that have no purpose on a site like Slashdot. so hit up the forums for your Distro flavor. don't forget NFS packet sizes vary on some unix. depending on what you use, set it. try not to get spoiled and use someones pretty app, they only make you lazy. Good Luck
Hypothetically, why can't you telnet in through the USB port, if the ethernet port isn't working?
USB Video card: I'm fairly certain I saw these around once. It may simplify things, but I don't know if X is ready for random display additions.
Crossover cable: If you're physically there, plug a laptop into the hub and connect to it. --------
If it didn't boot though, you may be unable to use either of these. That's when having a lightweight host for a paravirtualized Linux guest sounds good for updates and restarts. TIP: most modern distros recognize they're being paravirtualized and simply work at great speed improvements over CPU virtualization.
If you're new to this, try Virtual Machine Manager (GTK), the new Redhat web-based one, or anything else that runs atop libvirt.
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