Seeking advice on setting up a headless desktop
 

Hi folks,

Debian 6.0 desktop
KVM virtualizer
AMD CPU

I expect to setup this PC as a headless desktop remotely administrated by another desktop on LAN. I have been googling a while and couldn't find articles/instructions re how to config the BIOS of the headless desktop and other relevant steps. Please help. TIA

B.R.
satimis

A few questions and suggestions:
- All you have to do in the BIOS is to deactivate the stop at boot-time when no keyboard is found.
- Why do you run a desktop system on a headless machine?
- Which virtualizer do you plan to use (VMware, Qemu, Virtualbox)?

What about the display?

This is only a test

KVM
http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Main_Page
is already running on the PC

B.R.
satimis

Just don't plug in a monitor, the BIOS won't care, the OS neither.

KVM is a virtualization module for the Linux kernel. It only enables support for hardware virtualization. You still need a hypervisor software, that is where Qemu, VMware or Virtualbox join the game. Having a look at the site you linked I assume that you use Qemu-kvm. Debian 6 uses Qemu-kvm version 0.12.5, i would recommend to install version 1.0.0 from the Squeeze-backports repository.

Two other points:

1. Do you want to remotely power on the machine? This can usually be done on modern machines (via ethernet only for the most part) by enabling the BIOS power options to boot up on LAN, and using wake-on-lan (wol is older version) or etherwake (or ether-wake) on the remote machine to power on. Google will give more advice. I use it to fire up a home machine while I'm 100km away out in the bush.

2. If you are going to use the machine as a remote desktop server to provide a desktop to other machines then you will almost certainly want to use an NX based protocol over the LAN. The application I have used is x2go which is a snap to setup and run. It works over ssh and gives excellent performance even over wireless. Internet is slower but useable. This pretty well matches Microsoft's RDP (one of the better products from that revered company).

Ken

In addition, you will want to make sure that you can SSH into the box and also set up a static IP address.

Hi all,

Thanks for your advice.

I don't need to power-on the remote PC.

Performed following steps
On remote PC BIOS
set Halt on error/but Keyboard

then remote PC can start without error beeping.

On local PC
$ ssh +x 192.168.0.10
connect remote pc with x forwarding.

$ gnome-session >&/dev/null &
starts the remote desktop locally with transparent background.

However it is difficult reading 2 desktops. Is there anyway to make both desktops running side-by-side?

TIA

satimis

Do you really need to run a desktop on the remote system? Why not just run the applications you need to use?

This is only a test to refresh my recollection. I did it several years ago and it worked. I can also start the VM on the remote desktop.

This is an old PC which I dig it out from store room. It ran Debian 5.0. I tried to update the packages but the repositories were no longer supported. Than I was forced to upgrade it to Debian 6.0

I'm now testing it. That is the story.

B.R.
satimis

Of course it works, but that was not my point. If you start your (GUI) applications from the commandline they will be integrated as normal windows on your local desktop. I find that much more convenient than running them on a separate desktop.