[CentOS] Headless system

Tue Dec 17 17:56:48 UTC 2013
m.roth at 5-cent.us <m.roth at 5-cent.us>

Ashley M. Kirchner wrote:
> So I'm in a bit of a pickle ...  I have a machine that needs to be
> repurposed from WinXP to CentOS.  I downloaded the CentOS DVD and all then
> realized ... I don't have a keyboard/mouse for the machine.  It only has
> USB ports on it, and I don't have a single available USB keyboard that I
> can plug in.  Bit of a problem.
>
Suggestion: check the closets, and people's desks. Certainly, we have a
*lot* of crap (i.e., IDE drives, old, OLD SCSI drives) laying around.

And eBay's got 'em for $6,99. (No, you can't have mine that I have at
home, not until I get a USB one....)

> Usually what I do is install via VNC anyway, but that is contingent on me
> already having something on the machine that allows me to connect to it so
> that when it boots up, I can edit the boot parameters and enable VNC.  I
> don't have that this time.
>
> So, the question is: can I make a DVD image that starts the installer with
> VNC options set and if so, how do I go about that?

Kickstart. I'd say pxeboot, but without a keyboard to tell it to boot off
the net, that's a problem.

       mark