booting ubuntu without a monitor

H.S. hs.samix at gmail.com
Thu Apr 30 22:32:16 UTC 2009


Councill, David wrote:

> Debian Etch, on the other hand, did everything I wanted. Except the vnc
> consistently died after about a one minute connection with a kdm bug.
> Kyle's suggestion on the vncserver should work - the bug is in the
> default main session. Using vnc4server and creating a session, I can
> connect to the new session fine in my tests. And so I might go this
> route if there are no other ideas. The computer at present is running
> Debian lenny (5).
> 
> In short, I want a headless remote computer - no monitor, mouse, or
> keyboard. I need to be able to access it remotely but the programs I
> need to run require a GUI.
> 
> So far -
> 
> Ubuntu 8 - will not boot up without a monitor, stopping kdm allows it to

I do have Ubuntu on a headless system, but this is very surprising to
me. I expect it to boot up properly (as Lenny does).

> boot to a command line, vnc and ssh can access it BUT X cannot be
> started and no GUI available with vnc. Hooking a monitor up I can
> acknowledge the prompt and get booted in.  

Can you paste the contents of your vnc config file from your home
directory? It is probably in ~/.vnc<something>, or perhaps in
~/.xtightvnc (not sure, so you will have to look around a bit).



> 
> Ubuntu 9 - same except the low graphics mode no longer allows the user
> to bypass and login, restart is required.

Again, very surprising.


> Debian Lenny - with no monitor, it will boot up to the command line
> login, no need to disable kdm or gdm (that's progress). VNC and ssh work

In my case, gdm start successfully regardless of a monitor connected to
the system.


> fine on the monitor-less system. But I have yet to figure out how to get
> GUI access in vnc session, startx will not work.

Again, could you paste the contents of of your vnc startup file.


> 
> Debian Etch - booted fine without monitor, vnc accesses desktop but
> errors out within a minute. Tests with a virtual machine indicate

I have never experienced this and I cannot say much about this.


> vnc4server will get me past this bug so unless I can resolve the above
> problems, I'll try this next again.
> 
> I hope this is clear. Sure I might be able to workaround having a GUI

Am I right in understanding that by GUI you do not mean the login
screen? And that by GUI you mean a window manager and a desktop environment?

Regards.



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