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I apologize if this is a monumentally stupid question:

Is there a way to install Centos on a computer without a video card?

Just bought a computer that will only be used with an SSH connection, however, I need to get Centos on to it before that is even possible.

Is there a way to do this over LAN, use some sort of USB to VGA adapter, some other solution, or do I need to buy a video card just for this circumstance?

This is the mother board: ASRock 970 PRO3 R2.0 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

Thanks so much!

Chris Dutrow
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  • Is this for use in a professional environment? – MDMarra Jul 03 '13 at 22:48
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    Kind of, its not for a website. Its for processing large amounts of batch data. – Chris Dutrow Jul 03 '13 at 22:58
  • And you're OK trusting that job to a machine that doesn't have out-of-band management or even a video card for a crash cart? Nevermind the lack of ECC RAM or other server-grade components. How do you plan on doing any trouble shooting at all if the OS crashes? This seems like a horrible idea for use in a business. For tinkering at home? Sure, whatever. Awful for work. – MDMarra Jul 03 '13 at 23:01

3 Answers3

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You can either have the installation process start a VNC server which you can connect to, or you can have it connect to a listening VNC client on your computer.

At the boot prompt, to start a VNC server, enter:

linux vnc vncpassword=abc123

The server's IP address and port to connect to will be displayed on screen.

To connect to a remote listener, enter:

linux vnc vncpassword=abc123 vncconnect=192.0.2.148:5900

In either case you'll temporarily need to connect a keyboard and monitor to enter the connection information.

And...that's not a server motherboard.

Michael Hampton
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  • Does it need to be a server mother board? – Chris Dutrow Jul 03 '13 at 22:30
  • If you had an actual server motherboard, you could just connect over IPMI and you wouldn't have this problem. Not to mention the low quality and questionable reliability you're going to have in the future with this $75 special. – Michael Hampton Jul 03 '13 at 22:31
  • Ah, how does quality play into it? Like in what ways does that affect the overall performance of the system? – Chris Dutrow Jul 03 '13 at 22:33
  • It has nothing to do with performance. It has to do with the reliability of the part, the quality of the components, and the *remote manageability*, which is what @MichaelHampton was trying to impress on you – Joel E Salas Jul 03 '13 at 22:35
  • @ChrisDutrow Heat dispersion, chipsets, pastes, general construction, materials, etc. are not made to withstand long term usage under stressing environments unless it's a server-grade system. Also, features like IPMI not existing on consumer grade motherboards, is rather irritating as you have found out. – Wesley Jul 03 '13 at 22:35
  • Ah, yeah, its probably too late now since I already have it. However, what should I have expected to pay for an AM3+ mother board with 4 ram slots, 32GB max RAM, and supported 8 CPU cores? Looking on newegg.com, this one seemed to have high reviews. Or would I have had to go with an AMD Opteron system in order to get a proper mother board? – Chris Dutrow Jul 03 '13 at 22:38
  • @ChrisDutrow - typically you would have needed an Opteron board. They have a feature called IPMI which is an out of band controller, which allows you to control the KVM of the computer from elsewhere. It basically redirects the on-board video to IP. – Mark Henderson Jul 03 '13 at 22:45
  • Server boards often still have the once-ubiquitous serial port, which means that you have another option - to redirect a text-based console to the COM port, which is generally supported by any BIOS since about 1980. – Mark Henderson Jul 03 '13 at 22:46
  • Awesome, definitely will look into an Opteron system for the next ones then. The good news is these are redundant nodes, so if the mother board goes out on one, its not that big a deal. – Chris Dutrow Jul 03 '13 at 22:47
  • @ChrisDutrow That's fairly short-sighted, hardware failure is not the only concern here. You want out-of-band management for any possible system fault. Let's say you misconfigure the network interface and now you can't get in? Now you have to go down to the DC and fix your server. How about a kernel panic where you can't reboot? You *NEED* remote management of any servers under your care. – Joel E Salas Jul 03 '13 at 22:53
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Save yourself the headache. Buy the cheapest video card you can find... You COULD configure the bios to do a network boot to a network install of CentOS... But all and all You'll spend upwards of four weeks trouble shooting the thing... When you finally do get it going (it is possible), you will NOT be able to troubleshoot network problems. One wrong iptables statement, an accidental ip link set eth0 down, or anything to mess with the networking and it is back to square one....

If you can find a linux distribution that enables your first NIC and sets it to a static ip or uses DHCP and has ssh run... You might be able to manually build centos but this is no beginner task.

Daniel Widrick
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Aside from the obvious option of using a video card just to install centos and then removing the card, there are other options, what you are looking for is called "headless linux install" and in Centos is done using kickstart.

https://superuser.com/questions/465412/installing-linux-with-no-graphics-chip

Headless linux install

Hope it helps!

Community
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Sergio Ayestarán
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