Do Linux installers work headlessly?

Quartz · 28 May 2020 at 20:41

Indulge my curiosity.

If you boot a Linux install USB key could you Telnet / SSH / X into it and conduct the install from there?

On Holiday · 28 May 2020 at 20:47

memyselfandi · 30 May 2020 at 11:08

As well as using kickstart as above it is also possible in some cases to get the installer to spawn a VNC server which you can use even if the system is headless but has a network connection.

Quartz · 30 May 2020 at 13:40

memyselfandi said:
As well as using kickstart as above it is also possible in some cases to get the installer to spawn a VNC server which you can use even if the system is headless but has a network connection.

Excellent. Which distros do that?

memyselfandi · 30 May 2020 at 13:55

I know that RHEL does so I suspect that you can do it with CentOS

stuie · 1 Jun 2020 at 09:57

suse autoyast can be used for this

Hades · 2 Jun 2020 at 10:53

Another option you could consider is to install a minimal distribution while plugged into another PC. Most drivers are in the kernel so it should just detect any new hardware when you move it across. For example when I setup my headless microserver as a NAS a few years ago I plugged the hard drive into my main PC (unplugging all other drives), installed Ubuntu Server on there and configured SSH and a static IP, etc. Then I took the hard drive out and put it back into the microserver. It booted up fine and I could then SSH into it to install anything else I wanted.