Fedora 13 won't boot without a graphics card installed
 

Hi,

I am running Fedora 13 with a motherboard that doesn't have onboard graphics, so I had to put a PCIE card in to do the install.

However, I am using the box as a file server so I don't need graphics, and would like to be able to use the PCIE card for another computer.

So I took the card out and powered on, waited about 3 minutes and then typed in the login details. I then tried to SSH into it from another computer and couldn't connect, so it must not have booted up properly (I tried a few times to make sure).

I have read about a similar problem that occurs on Fedora 9 when there is no monitor attached - this is apparently solved by adding "nomodeset" to the grub entry, but that didn't work.

There is no X or Gnome/KDE installed and the default runlevel is 3.

I couldn't find anything about this in the system log, so if anyone has any advice that would be great.

Cheers,
Gus

PS - also, usually when the power button is pressed there is a pause before it powers off, but without a graphics card the power button turns it off immediately no matter how long you have waited.

It could be several things, one being your bios may have an option to stop on video errors.

Are you sure it isn't the BIOS that is refusing to start without a display card?

Look through the BIOS menu (after temporarily installing a card again) for an option to allow booting without a display card.

Why don't you use old PCI card taken from some old PC?

I guess, you can comment out the splash in /boot/grub/grub.conf

Example :
# splashimage=(hd0,10)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

.....

or reinstall in text only( no gui ,no x11,no gnome) seeing as this will be a headless server

Also Fedora is a VERY,VERY,VERY bad choice for a server .You will need to reinstall the server software EVERY 6 MONTHS what fedora releases a new version
and with ONLY 13 months of updates if you skip a version , you will STILL need to reinstall EVERY year. NO IFS ANDS OR BUTTS

CentOS 6.0 will be refreshment for those who want to install servers but also want newer software. It will come at the end of the year.

Hi guys,

thanks for your help. I did look through the BIOS and it was already set to halt on no errors, so no luck there but I am pretty sure it's BIOS, not Fedora related, so I will have a look for some information to do with the motherboard.

DrLove, yeah I could do that but it would be good to have the spare for something else, and also it's one less part to worry about when the server is running all the time.

John VV, this server will only be seen by me and a couple of other PCs on a LAN (using it as a network drive), so I'm not too bothered about updating the software. Does it update automatically by default, and is there a way to disable it if it does?

Cheers,
Gus

yumupdated is daemon that will check for updates regularly, but updates are by default only run manually.

PCI graphics cards are mostly without coolers since they do not even get worm during their work (ancient PCI, not PCIe!!!)