Hello everyone,

I'm trying to get a Slack 10 box to boot to CL prompt without a keyboard or mouse attached (since they're not reqd) but Slackware will not complete the boot process.

Any ideas what I should be looking to do here?

The box doesn't "need" a keyboard or mouse as since it doesn't have a monitor either and I hope to administer it using putty. Thanks for any help you can provide!

Where in the boot process does it halt and what specific message does it give?

Where does Slackware stop?
What about any error messages?

Hey!

Well this is what happens:

Normally I work on my Slack box when I'm not using the XP or Solaris machines and I temporarily donate a kb/mouse/monitor setup to it. I then started to leave it running and unplug the k/m/m and return them to the donor machine so that I could carry on working with Slackware (using putty) while I see to other tasks.

I belatedly decided to just try booting the box without a k/m/m and the discovered the boot process just hanging without any messages. As soon as I plug the k/m/m back in the process completes and I get a login prompt!

I'll have to try it again for the specific point it stops at so I'll get back to you...

Is your computer old or new, because older computers require to have a keyboard connected and some don't like the fact that no monitor is plugged.

I run several slack 10.x machines "headless" (no keyboard mouse or monitor) and as long as you set the bios not to halt on any errors, it should work just fine.

Slack doesnt care whats plugged into the pc, i suspect it is saying something like "no keyboard detected, press f4 to continue" which you cant, coz theres no keyboard plugged in.........

Anyway, just plug a monitor and kbd in, check the bios settings and it should be sorted.

mixtr - the machine in question is old (10+ yrs) so I suspect what you and KaYoS are referring to is quite right. I'll check the BIOS settings asap.

KaYoS - 'headless' seems the appropriate expression for me too!

Thanks for your help, guys.