Ubuntu headless settings

iraiguana · 21 Aug 2009 at 22:22

Hi,

I recently installed latest version of Ubuntu 9.04.

It works great with my dual core atom D945GCLF, I have monitor mouse and keyboard attached.

I want to be able to have the system boot without a monitor attached, but everytime it comes up with "low graphics error" and asks me to reconfig my xorg.conf

Looking into the xorg log it says its searching for an output on VGA and TV-1 and both give disconnect messages. It tries this twice and then I get my low graphics error.

I have tried a few things I could find but nothing seems to be telling me how to set-up my X config so it does not search for a monitor.

Thanks for helping out a linux newb!

craptakular · 24 Aug 2009 at 21:36

I had this when trying to use Xubuntu as a home server. I gave up and used a debian net CD. Best decision I could have made. Debian pee pee's on ubuntu for server use.

Not really helpful, but my suggestion is to give up on ubuntu and go debian!

I could never overcome the ubuntu no monitor mystery either!

dangerstat · 24 Aug 2009 at 22:29

Oxy said:
I had this when trying to use Xubuntu as a home server. I gave up and used a debian net CD. Best decision I could have made. Debian pee pee's on ubuntu for server use.

Not really helpful, but my suggestion is to give up on ubuntu and go debian!

I could never overcome the ubuntu no monitor mystery either!

I love Debian too, BUT it is at the price of using an older Kernel, with genuine FLOSS from the install. To the OP I've never had that issue, you could try the Ubuntu chan on Freenode?

Conrad11 · 24 Aug 2009 at 22:42

Currently suffering from the same issue with the same hardware. (although I don't think it's linked to the hardware)

craptakular · 24 Aug 2009 at 23:15

it not hardware related, its a bug in ubuntu

FirebarUK · 25 Aug 2009 at 10:13

Is booting into text mode not an option?

Conrad11 · 27 Aug 2009 at 11:19

I've decided to just give up on Ubuntu and use FreeNAS instead. Should be able to do everything I want.

.walls · 27 Aug 2009 at 13:21

linky

Obviously not very useful to OP now that FreeNAS is going in but maybe, just maybe, someone in the future will use the search function and it will help them...

Conrad11 · 27 Aug 2009 at 14:34

.walls said:
linky

Obviously not very useful to OP now that FreeNAS is going in but maybe, just maybe, someone in the future will use the search function and it will help them...

It was actually me that gave up on ubuntu not the OP, but I will test this out for the OP in a couple of hours and post my results.

My only concern is will you be able to VNC into the server at the login screen? Cause I am pretty sure last time I tried you couldn't...or is there something you need to enable/do?

Thanks for the link.

EDIT:
Tested it and the same problem still applies because you now can't have it automatically login because it boots to commandline and you have to enter login details and then startx.

.walls · 27 Aug 2009 at 15:10

Conrad11 said:
It was actually me that gave up on ubuntu not the OP, but I will test this out for the OP in a couple of hours and post my results.

heh - teach me to read

My only concern is will you be able to VNC into the server at the login screen? Cause I am pretty sure last time I tried you couldn't...or is there something you need to enable/do?

Why VNC? X forward through an ssh tunnel.... ok - this will only work if the box you're jumping from is running X, so if it's a Windows box, I'm pretty sure you can use Cygwin for this.

If you need to use VNC, then you can ssh to the box and start X/gdm/kdm/xdm/whatever and then use vnc to connect.

EDIT:

EDIT:
Tested it and the same problem still applies because you now can't have it automatically login because it boots to commandline and you have to enter login details and then startx.

[/quote]

bugger.

Conrad11 · 27 Aug 2009 at 16:55

How do I now reverse what I have done? (Get GDM back)

(Linux noob here)

.walls · 27 Aug 2009 at 17:27

Conrad11 said:
How do I now reverse what I have done? (Get GDM back)

(Linux noob here)

Sabayon/Gentoo would be

Code:

rc-update add gdm defaults

Ubuntu would be... um... (quick google).. try this:

linky

so

Code:

update-rc.d gdm defaults

I guess

EDIT: Um, wait... hang on... so it doesn't boot even without X starting? what's the output of /var/log/xorg.log?

Conrad11 · 27 Aug 2009 at 17:40

It boots to text login....i just want it to boot into the GUI login like before because it now won't let me mount drives.

.walls · 27 Aug 2009 at 19:13

right - well in that case, what's wrong?

The box boots... ssh to the box... startx... x forward to your client... job done.

If that doesn't do what you want (and if it doesn't, then I haven't got a clue what you actually want....), then boot the box, log in as root and run the above commands. IF that doesn't work for you, then boot the box, log in as root and issue the command "/etc/init.d/gdm start" and run through the steps you did before, but set gdm to start at boot (but hey - the above commands should do that anyway).

Conrad11 · 27 Aug 2009 at 19:40

Figured it out. Thank you .walls

Rroff · 27 Aug 2009 at 20:35

Whatever you do, don't leave VNC Server open to the internet and running for any length of time when your not actually connected... hacking VNC is trivial... if possible limit it to local host connections and tunnel via ssh to connect to it.

PermaBanned · 27 Aug 2009 at 21:57

iraiguana · 29 Aug 2009 at 23:38

Just to say, I have now removed gdm and boot into the box by ssh. I decided that with fugu and ssh I should be able to do everything I need.

I wanted to keep vnc as an option on the box, but sadly the gdm/X would require an input on the VGA to detect settings and would fail every time you tried to run it over ssh.

To anyone trying to do this, give up with ubuntu and try a different distro OR just go for all SSH and use a sftp to quickly double check the things you think are happening actually are.

Also finally got SABnzbd+ to run as a daemon which is a bit of a pain to set-up with various tutorials all suggesting different things.

//edit Forgot to say thank you for those that suggested ways around the problem. Sadly this was the only way round the problem.

FirebarUK · 30 Aug 2009 at 09:24

To anyone trying to do this, give up with ubuntu and try a different distro OR just go for all SSH and use a sftp to quickly double check the things you think are happening actually are.

Or just stick with Ubuntu, boot into text mode then SSH into the machine to do anything.....

Ian_F · 7 Sep 2009 at 15:30

iraiguana said:
To anyone trying to do this, give up with ubuntu and try a different distro OR just go for all SSH and use a sftp to quickly double check the things you think are happening actually are.

Hi guys,

First post here so be gentle with me :rolleyes:

If you install Ubuntu Server and THEN install the gnome-core you can have the box boot quite happily into "text mode". Once it's booted you can then run a "virtual" gnome desktop using VNC from your desktop. It's fully resumable in that everything on your virtual desktop remains asis even if you reboot your desktop. It works just the same as if you were sitting infront of your server running Ubuntu Desktop instead of Ubuntu Server.

So, the best of both worlds IMHO