Headless Install

[cpghost]

Maksym Marchenko wrote:

> Sometimes I see warning:
> terminal is not fully functional.
> So I can't edit kernel file mit ee - the text is shown "shifted" in 
> their lines.
> Must I use another terminal program to help this?

You just need to set TERM to something sensible, say,
'cons25' or 'xterm'.

If you ssh to the box from a FreeBSD console,
TERM should already be set to 'cons25'. If you ssh from
an xterm, TERM will (or should) already be 'xterm'.

If you use some other terminal emulator (e.g. from
Windows or so), try setting both your emulator and
TERM to 'vt100'.

> And what you can do with "headless" PC? Can you control this PC only in
> command prompt? Or (may be) you can use anything like X - twm?

What do you want to do with it?

If you want to do maintenance work (configure servers like, say, postfix,
cyrus/imap, thttpd, set up ppp[oe], natd, ...), just ssh to the box like
you would to any other server too. In normal day to day operations, just
access the misc. servers from outside your headless PC with your favorite
clients. Very simple.

Something like X would be absolute overkill. You want X on your regular
workstation; not on the headless server! But if you absolutely must,
just install the X clients, X libraries etc... on the headless machine
via ports as usual. You definitely don't need an X server on a headless
machine though ;)

Oh, and btw, you can tweak your kernel config file: just remove everything
that you don't need, like vga, sc, keyboard, ... If you don't have the
hardware for it on board, why bother having a driver for it in the kernel?

Enjoy!

cpghost.

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