On Thursday 05 June 2003 13:03, Gary Hennigan wrote: > "Mike M" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > I want to save money as I expand my collection of Debian servers by > > running without a video card. On the rare occasion that I need > > console access to a machine I would pull it off the shelf and insert > > an AGP video card. > > > > I just tried it on one of my servers and the only thing I observed > > was a beep during the boot-up sequence.
My bad here. I meant to report that everything worked and the only thing that changed from before was that I heard a beep. I am able to ssh in and it's doing its job with no problem that I can detect so far. > > > > Several questions come to mind: > > > > Is this an acceptable mode of operation? Are others running in this > > mode? > > > > Should most motherboards being recently produced be expected to run > > without a video card? (Maybe it's a BIOS thing?) > > The BIOS on a lot of machines, particularly older ones, won't allow > you to boot without a video card. In some cases you can tweak a BIOS > setting to tell it to ignore the lack of a video card and boot anyway, > *but*, you have to install a video card in order to set that in the > BIOS, usually. OK. I remember those options. I changed it when the machine complained about not having a keyboard in a previous exercise. I can't remember what value I set. It must be set to ignore all errors since the machine came up. > > Is it a valid approach? Yeah, I suppose there's nothing wrong with the > approach, if your machines BIOS supports booting without a video card, > but it's a MIGHTY pain to have to add a video card when something goes > wrong. For most cases like this I generally just get a computer with > built-in video, set it up while connected to a monitor and then > disconnect the monitor and throw it in the closet. Either that or I > shell out $30 for a cheapo VGA card. If I tried setting up a server > without a video card I know I'd be cursing myself every time something > went wrong and I had to open up the case and install a video card just > to diagnose the problem. Geez, I must really be a tightwad :-). I shopped for on-board video mobos at pricewatch but found the selection had fewer PCI slots than I needed (4-5) at the price point I wanted ($40). I am trying to build a sub $200 server. Debian is making CDROMs pointless as well. I am looking a 7 CDROM drives that I rarely use. It's time I looked in to loading from a network drive. Thanks for the advice. I going to run video card-less in a couple of boxes for a while to see how often I need monitor access. I might do the serial access thing mentioned in another response. > > Gary -- Mike M. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
