I've got a fairly unique problem that hopefully someone can help me fix....

Here's the situation. I have a box running Mandrake 10. This box has a problem with the video card....When the system posts, I get 1 long, 2 short some type of vid card problem (I can't get the monitor to pick up any signal)

Now, the system was working fine using ssh to log into the box, but I added a line to rc.local and forgot the & at the end of the line, so now the system hangs on boot.

Since I can't use a monitor and ssh no longer can access the box, I need to somehow enter an interactive setup mode and go blindly through (the keyboard still works) the prompts to get to a point where I can start up sshd and then access the box via ssh to re-edit rc.local..... any suggestions? ^^

Thanks in advance,

--Ryan

P.S. Please feel free to mention how idiotic this was of me, I've told myself numerous times already, so hearing it a bit more won't hurt.

perhaps you can use some live cd, access your root partition, and edit the rc.local from the live cd.

Oh yeah, the CDRom drive doesn't work anymore either.....I really ought to fix some of these problems.....

Is it possible to have a floppy startup disk that will run sshd so I can ssh to the box and fix the problem that way (as opposed to typing blindly without a monitor)?

I figured out a workaround using an LRP bootdisk with an SSH daemon to get it working. woot ^^

Assuming you have lilo for boot-loader: press <Esc> when you think it's in the boot menu, type
'linux single' and press <Enter>. Wait until the harddisk stops (say 10-20 sec) and type
'mv /etc/rc.d/rc.local /etc/rc.d/no'. Type 'reboot' and hope for the best.

Strange though; rc.local runs last in the boot chain so both the network and sshd should be up and running.
Unless the rc.local command totally hangs the computer you should be able to access it through ssh.

Edit: nevermind, solution already found while I was typing

- Peder

The "beeps" you are hearing come from the BIOS.

The BIOS beeps to indicate that it has failed to find a fully functional video adapter.

Usually this is in turn caused by either a damaged adapter or more commonly a video card that has creapt out of it's socket.

Open your computer's case.

Find the video display adapter and loosen the retaining screw.

Now press the display adapter fully into the motherboard.

Carefully tighten the retaining screw again.

If you find that tightening the screw causes the adapter to creep out of it's socket, leave the screw only finger tight, so it stops doing this.

Some cases/motherboards do not fit well together and the interface cards will creep out of place causing problems and possibly damaging your system.