Do I need monitor, mouse, keyboard?

[Jeffrey Ross]

Mike - EMAIL IGNORED wrote:
> On the box on which I run Apache and a few
> other daemons, I virtually never use the
> monitor, keyboard, or mouse.  I maintain
> the box over ssh.  Is there any reason I
> have to keep these peripherals plugged in
> to the box?
>
> Thanks for your help.
> Mike.
>
>
>   
I've run machines for years that are "headless"  in my case I've gone 
one step further and even removed the video card (not all machines allow 
you to work without the video card)

Once the machine is installed, I configure grub to use a serial 
console.  When the machine boots, grub will present the boot menu via 
the serial port.  This way you can connect another machine directly to 
its serial port or even via a modem (they still make those? :-) )

Here's the grub.conf from a FC4 system I'm running:

#boot=/dev/hda
# below added for serial console
#
password --md5 **PASSWORD HASH HERE**
serial --unit=0 --speed=9600 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
terminal --timeout=10 serial
#splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
#
# end serial console
#
default=0
timeout=5
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.17-1.2142_FC4)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.17-1.2142_FC4 ro root=LABEL=/ 
console=ttyS0,9600n8
        initrd /initrd-2.6.17-1.2142_FC4.img