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I apologize if this is a monumentally stupid question:

Is there a way to install Centos on a computer without a video card?

Just bought a computer that will only be used with an SSH connection, however, I need to get Centos on to it before that is even possible.

Is there a way to do this over LAN, use some sort of USB to VGA adapter, some other solution, or do I need to buy a video card just for this circumstance?

This is the mother board: ASRock 970 PRO3 R2.0 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

Thanks so much!

Chris Dutrow
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3 Answers3

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You can either have the installation process start a VNC server which you can connect to, or you can have it connect to a listening VNC client on your computer.

At the boot prompt, to start a VNC server, enter:

linux vnc vncpassword=abc123

The server's IP address and port to connect to will be displayed on screen.

To connect to a remote listener, enter:

linux vnc vncpassword=abc123 vncconnect=192.0.2.148:5900

In either case you'll temporarily need to connect a keyboard and monitor to enter the connection information.

And...that's not a server motherboard.

Michael Hampton
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Save yourself the headache. Buy the cheapest video card you can find... You COULD configure the bios to do a network boot to a network install of CentOS... But all and all You'll spend upwards of four weeks trouble shooting the thing... When you finally do get it going (it is possible), you will NOT be able to troubleshoot network problems. One wrong iptables statement, an accidental ip link set eth0 down, or anything to mess with the networking and it is back to square one....

If you can find a linux distribution that enables your first NIC and sets it to a static ip or uses DHCP and has ssh run... You might be able to manually build centos but this is no beginner task.

Daniel Widrick
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Aside from the obvious option of using a video card just to install centos and then removing the card, there are other options, what you are looking for is called "headless linux install" and in Centos is done using kickstart.

https://superuser.com/questions/465412/installing-linux-with-no-graphics-chip

Headless linux install

Hope it helps!

Community
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Sergio Ayestarán
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