Linux won't boot without monitor attached
 

Hi,

I'm a Linux newbie, and have just installed slackware running kernel 2.4.22.

I'm trying to set up a 2-PC/1-monitor configuration: A Windows PC and a Linux PC. I access my Linux PC through telnet (yeah I know, telnet bad, ssh good, not there yet... this is an experimental box behind a firewall, so I'm not too worried)

Linux works great if I have my monitor plugged into it. If the monitor is not plugged in, it won't boot correctly. This is a major hassle, because I keep on having to crawl around switching my monitor from one PC to the other.

Does anyone know if there is any reason why my Linux PC shouldn't boot correctly without a monitor attached? Is there any way around this?

Any help would be appreciated...

I forgot to mention that I boot using LILO... it only has a single entry, and defaults to my linux os after a few seconds (I have no other os on this PC).

Linux most definitly doesn't check for a display before booting.... perhaps this is something your bios does?!? I have never heard of anyone having a problem with that though either.

BTW... just so you know, if you do want to switch to ssh putty and pscp are free tools that allow you to use ssh and scp (secure copy using ssh) on windows. Searching for putty in google will bring up the website that houses both of these programs.

You are also sharing the keyboards I bet. Most computers won't boot up without a keyboard attached, but may have an option in BIOS. Otherwise I don't see why it wouldn't boot up.

I can access my linux box at home from my win98 laptop at work over the company network using a program called SSH32 but putty doesn't work for me. I was suprised how easy it was. I just entered the ip address the other settings I left in default. Then I just entered my password to start the session, and was using a bash login shell. You may have to forward port 22 to your computers IP address to get it to work in your situation however.

The worst part of using telnet, is that if someone can monitor the traffic, they can see your password when you log-in. If you su to root during the session, they have your root password.

Strangely, I can remove the keyboard, and the PC boots fine. There is a warning message in the linux bootup log, but it doesn't seem to affect anything. I can't find any obvious settings in the BIOS which regulate whether a monitor is plugged-in.

As for ssh, I've got it working, but I have to say that I'm not impressed with any of the freeware clients - I've downloaded and tried five or six, including putty. I've always used Exceed at work for unix stuff, and I have an old copy on my home PC. It stores the userid, password, and the customizable xterm command. I click on the icon on my desktop, and I'm in. Unfortunately, the older version which I have does not support ssh. But it's so much nicer to work with than all these ssh clunkers.

If your remote computer is running linux, things work pretty nicely. You can change the DISPLAY environment variable, and from within the SSH shell, you can type the name of a program. The program running on your home computer, will open up on the remote computer.

Could your original problem be with the video driver? If you back up your /etc/X11/XF86config-4 file, and change to a generic vesa driver, will the problem persist?

Thanks for your suggestions, however after listening more closely to my machine as it boots, I've decided that this is a problem with my motherboard/bios, so there's nothing I can do about it through Linux - the boot process isn't getting that far.

Cheers.