how to install ubuntu to a box without display monitor?

[Colin Murphy]

On Sunday 13 April 2008 15:57:25 webflier wrote:
> Dear all,
> i have a box without display monitor, how can i install ubuntu?
> the box has a dvd-rom and a network adapter.
> is there any workarounds?

Once upon a time, when I used to use SuSE, and it was so long ago it was spelt 
SuSE, there used to be an VNC install option on the boot command line.  This 
option may have been something standard in the kernal, I just remember it was 
SuSE I was playing with at the time.

At boot time you would pass an IP address that the VNC client was going to be 
hanging off and you would control the  install, from the local CD/DVD, of 
that machine from the remote machine, through the VNC session.  While this 
did work, you still had to plug in, at least, a network cable, obviously, and 
a keyboard, so that you you could blindly type the boot parameters.  

I was never able to figure out how to make a boot floppy to pass these boot 
parameters automatically, saving on the need for the keyboard and frustrating 
uncertainty of 'blind typing', otherwise I would have used this approach to 
do attempted installs on many of the old machines that were passing through 
me at that time. It was easy to find a spare power and network cable - 
finding space for another monitor and keyboard to attempt these installs on 
machines that migh^h^h^h probably were junk made it too much of an effort, so 
these machines never got played with.

Anyone else remember this feature?

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