I am only minimally familiar with Linux, or networking. I have four laptops (various ages and OS's) and one old desktop in my house. My only printer is attached to a seldom-used Windows desktop (big and slow and noisy) on the third floor. When anyone wants to print, which is rare (once every two weeks?) we have to go upstairs, boot the desktop, go back to the laptop and send to the shared printer, go back upstairs to power down the desktop, then return to wherever we first were.
For some time now I have been wondering how I might cheaply put a low-energy-use low-noise print server in the basement that runs 24/7 and takes up little space. Going to the basement to retrieve the occasional print would be less problem, especially if the print server was already ready. Then recently the display on one of my old Dell C610 laptops died. One minute or so after booting the display would just completely white-out. I decided to use the hard drive and memory for some other project and was going to throw out the old Dell. But then I vaguely remembered past readings on the Internet from people who say they run servers without monitors or even keyboards... Hmm. Is it possible to boot a minimal Linux OS from a cdrom on this broken display Dell (with 256M ram) that would enable me to use it as a print server? I would use a wired Ethernet connection to the hub in the basement. Hmm. I'm thinking- would I first need to boot with an attached external monitor to configure the Bios to use the external monitor? (chicken or egg?) Since the display doesn't work, can I completely detach it? Or will the Bios/OS complain? Can I somehow boot from a rescue cdrom or Live-CD of some kind that would allow me to connect and configure its OS via the network? Or, how can I build my own bootable cdrom that would allow this? (The Bios will not allow booting from USB.) I'd have to install the printer driver, which is not native to Linux builds (Brother HL2040). Which native Linux software would I need to run to accomplish this sort of thing- Samba? What else? Seems like this would be a fun project and I would learn a lot, if I can find a tutorial, website, or detailed hints... Thanks, Keith Ostertag -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/d2cbf324c7fa1c5379136cc8a5520ba5.squir...@webmail.strucktower.com
