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I have a P4 system that I installed Fedora 11 on. It will not boot without a monitor attached. The monitor can be off (not even have power plugged in), but must be attached. Without a monitor the hard disk thrashes around a bit like it's starting up services, but does not get to the point where I can ssh into the box. I have set the default runlevel to 3 and removed the rhgb entry from grub.

Any suggestions welcome.

Edit: I have already set the run-level to 3. The machine boots up fine with the monitor plugged in to the point where I can SSH into it. as soon as i unplug the monitor and reboot, it will not boot to that point.

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4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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After much trial and error this solved it.

I added the following to my kernel parameters:

nomodeset
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This sounds very odd, especially the powered off monitor part, I would imagine that your problem is somewhere else. However if you plan on booting headless than you don't need to boot X at all, modify /etc/inittab and change the line id:5:initdefault: to id:3:initdefault:

and reboot, or conversely add 3 to the end of the kernel options when you boot through grub.

Lets see how far that gets you. If you have any mechanism to monitor what is happening via the serial port that would be tremendously informative also.

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Are you sure your diagnosis is correct?

Correct me if I am wrong, but you are saying without the monitor connected you cannot SSH?

I would assume that SSH has not been configured to start so try these steps:

  1. Connect monitor
  2. Boot into Fedora and login
  3. When at prompt try the following command: chkconfig --level 2345 sshd on
  4. Reboot the server with command: shutdown -r now
  5. Wait for server to reboot
  6. Try using SSH now
  7. If successful, reboot the server and remove the monitor
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  • O yes he was correct I still have F11 ( 2012 :) and it is driving me mad about the same issue.
    – user140907
    Oct 13, 2012 at 10:28
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This could be a hardware issue and not related to the OS.

Many older non server motherboards require a connected monitor on boot during P.O.S.T sequence otherwise the motherboard will halt during post never reaching your operating system.

This often unfortunately often holds true even if you enable the "Don’t halt on Error option" in the Bios.

The detection of the monitor is done by measuring the small amount of current sent in the pins in the VGA port.

You can make a dummy connector by simply connecting three 50-100O Ohm resistors between the pins shown below.

This will allow your computer to boot even without a monitor connected.

enter image description here

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