Install on headless machine via VNC - is it still possible?

Colin Murphy Colin at spudulike.me.uk
Thu Oct 18 19:32:27 UTC 2007


Many moons ago I remember playing with a version of SuSE (it was spelt that 
way then) which allowed you to append a entry to the 'boot line' which would 
start a VNC server immediately on start-up.  This then meant that you could 
control that machine remotely from a VNC client - I was even able to run 
an 'install' session remotely, the installation screens come up on the remote 
VNC client.  This, it seemed to me, was an excellent way to do an install on 
a machine that was headless, i.e. no monitor or mouse, and the keyboard was 
only needed briefly to append the boot line with the VNC magic, basically 
some network configuration.  From memory, the VNC server was part of the 
kernel.

I am less than confident about my grasp of the terminology used for all of 
this, so I have shied away from Google and gone for a far fuzzier search 
engine, err, you guys ;-)

* Does this feature still exist at all and is it in the kernel used by Ubuntu?

* The usefulness of this facility missed it's mark because it wasn't totally 
headless, you needed the keyboard to append the network information to the 
boot line.  I had asked questions about creating a specific boot media, 
floppy back then, maybe usb key now, that would have this information set by 
default.  Unfortunately, most of my questioning threads went off topic and 
started discussing pxeboot instead.  The time has come for me to ask again,   
is creating this boot media possible and is it likely to work in the way I 
envisage? 

Ta muchly.

-- 
Gotta' go, things to be, people to do, stuff to, err, stuff.
Colin at spudulike.me.uk




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