SUMMARY: Install RedHat 8.0 on a headless box.

["Christian J. Miller" <Chris@TCLC.org>]

There is some small interest in my procedure.  Yes, Here is my
experience.

There are several steps.

1) You need a null modem cable that reaches between your headless and
your desktop.  A serial break-out box is very helpful.

2) You need to make sure that you have correct communication.  In my
case I had a Palm Pilot synch application running on my serial port on
my desktop that caused me problems until I discovered it.  I confirmed
that I had everything working properly by using an old serial break-out
box and setting the speed as slow as I could (110) so I could see the
LEDs blink.  This was an important insight.  Your headless machine is
trickier.  You need to make sure that you know which serial port to use.
I was configured that my serial port was COM1 in Windoze parlance.  If
you use something different, you will need to make adjustments to the
ttyS[01213] designation to correspond.

3) Fire up HyperTerminal (or equivalent) on your Windoze box (or
equivalent)  I used HyperTerminal set to 9600,8,N,1 and I used no flow
control, but I didn't check to see what other values would work.

The above is pretty easy to guess and is almost obvious.  It required no
special privileges or authorization.  I was not running with
administrator rights.

The tricky part was the hack on the boot floppy.  On the boot floppy is
a file -- SYSLINUX.CFG which represents your choices.  The first line
was "default linux"  I changed that to be "default headless"  and then I
constructed a headless option by inserting the copied section at the end
of the case statement with a "headless" tag.    I also changed the
timeout on the second line from 600 to 100 -- one minute to ten seconds.
The end of the file  is a case statement which presents boot parameters.
I copied the section for "text" and created a new section called
"headless" and in it I ADDED the parameter "console=ttyS0" (because I
used COM1 on my headless box) in among the list of existing parameter.

It looked something like this: (THIS IS FROM MEMORY!  It is a
suggestion, not a directive.)
label headless
  kernel vmlinuz
  append initrd=initrd.img text console=ttyS0 devfs=nomount

If you boot on this floppy, you will see the expected text display on
your HyperTerminal display, after a short delay of ten or fifteen
seconds.  You will be given the option of booting on the local CDROM or
from disk, for RedHat 8.0 Boot Floppy.



Chris.

Life is a journey, not a destination ...
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