Running FC2 with no video card at all?
 

I used to run Slack 10 on my server with no video card in it at all (Sempron 2500+, Soyo KT400 Dragon, 512 MB PC2700). Slack ran fine until one day I made a cron job that... well, was made wrong, and destroyed most of the files. So, I have decided to recover from that by getting Fedora Core 2 since it's easier to update and such.

Now, I have Fedora Core 2 successfully setup and running. My only problem is that it won't boot with no video card. I have set it to initlevel 3, and it doesn't boot into X like it normally does... any suggestions?

You need a video card for X.
If you mean it doesn't boot at all, it's most likely BIOS related.
Just make run level 3 the default.

I have already set it to runlevel 3, and it still won't boot. I stated that in my previous post.

And I know you need a video card to run X, I'm not that stupid lol.

Re: Running FC2 with no video card at all?
 

This sentence can be interpreted as "I try to boot into X, but it doesn't work." :rolleyes:

Anyway, how did you install the server? I have built a couple of headless server machines. I go about it by first adding a videocard and monitor. Then after installation and testing that everything works I remove the monitor and put the machine in a closet. Have you done something similar to that? If so, try adding the videocard and monitor again. Now the machine should boot. Right? Try reading some of the log files in /var/log/, especially
/var/log/messages
and / or
/var/log/messages.1 /var/log/messages.2
and so on.

It may be something like kudzu (hardware probe and configuration) that breaks the boot process.

Good luck!
Martin

If it boots with the card, it's BIOS related.
On some systems, the BIOS checks for a video card.
If it's not their, it wont boot...

Try connecting through SSH.

Re: Running FC2 with no video card at all?
 

I already have the operating system installed, I did it with a video card (Radeon 9800 XT) in it, and then took it out and it won't boot. It's not kudzu, because kudzu will resume to normal booting after 30 seconds, which my server does not.

It's not my hardware, I've booted it with Slackware running no video card.

And if it did boot, I would've been able to connect to it through SSH which I have already tried.

And there are no errors/warnings in the log/message folders.

This is rather interesting. I would very much like to know what the problem is when you solve it. I don't have any direct solution, but I could always speculate a little. ;) I have never built a system where I removed the video card. I just left an old PCI card in the computer. This is of course a "solution" for you too, but it's not very scientific, is it?

Have you got any feeling for when in the boot process things stop? If it's very early, one could suspect that the gettys (getties?) don't work if no video card is connected. Pure speculation, though. I have nothing to justify this idea.

Otherwise, try booting the system with a minimal set of services. I would use runlevel 4, since it's unused anyway. This is the services that my headless RedHat 9 system starts: Some random ideas:

o Are you sure that the system doesn't boot? Speaking from experience :p, make sure that iptables doesn't stop you from connecting with SSH.

o Is your BIOS configured as "Halt on: No errors"? Otherwise, the BIOS hangs if you don't have a keyboard connected with the lovely message "No keyboard connected, hit F1 to continue"

Martin

Well, Martin, I've double checked the BIOS and it is set to properly boot with no videocard.

I also checked to make sure that iptables and the firewall were disabled completely, and they were. I was even able to gain SSH access to it from my parents computer through PuTTY.

I'm going to change the runlevel to 4, and see if that helps in any way. I think the loading stops right after it selects the kernel, so maybe I will have to recompile it, which isn't really that big of a deal.

I'm also going to take a second glance at the services that startup when I boot... but I don't think it's made it far enough to begin loading anything except the kernel.

I feel that I'm on thin ice now, but couldn't the gettys be the problem? If they try to connect to /dev/ttyN, what happens if there is no video card?

You could try to comment out these lines from /etc/inittab Unfortunately I don't have the time and means to test this myself now. My life is currently revolving around cardboard boxes, since I'm moving.

Martin