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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."
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...
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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 -- 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.
And THAT sir is why we PC repair guys are packrats and never throw anything working away. You just never know when somebody is gonna desperately need that old crap!
My story like that is I had a guy practically in tears walk into the last shop I was hired gunning for, holding an old ISA card and asking for a PC that would fit it. I thought the guy was gonna cry when the boss said "I don't think we got anything that will take that" as he had hit every shop between his work and us, and all had told him a minimum of 2 weeks to get something that would work. I said "I got a couple of old gamer rigs in my closet at home that'll take that" and thought the guy was gonna kiss me.
It turned out that old card was a CNC controller for a lathe that made custom scroll work on columns, that he was the owners son who had FINALLY trusted the guy enough to put him in charge while he went on vacation, and naturally the lathe controller chose that week to go tits up and he had a $50k job due in 3 days and without the columns he would lose the job. he ended up paying me $300 for a pair of old boxes that weren't worth $100 together PLUS a full days pay at time and a half PLUS paying Doug to let me off for the day PLUS paying me to drop everything and spend the day setting it up for him. It turned out this lathe was made in like 86, the company went tits up in 89, and so naturally it would ONLY run in DOS 3. Lucky for him I still knew all my old DOS commands and the HDD (which was a 40Mb, IIRC) was still good so I could clone it.
All told I made close to $1000 for a single day's work, and he got not only the lathe up and running, but a spare 233MHz so the next time it happened he would be ready to go and not have any downtime. I set the 233Mhz up in the office in the corner and showed him how to boot once a month to keep the HDD spinning, and when his dad came back the man was so impressed he gave his kid a raise and more responsibility. So it just goes to show that you never know when that old POS you are hanging onto might be worth money. And if you ever need an old part your local mom and pop shop is a wealth of old hardware at cheap prices. So go talk to your local PC repair shop guy, you'll find a wealth of hardware cheap, and a great source for the DIY builder.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.