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Microsoft

Headless Windows 2000 Servers? 62

Posted by Cliff from the riding-a-PDP11-with-a-monitor-for-a-head dept.
Ichabod Gates asks: "I have a home network with a few Windows 2000 servers that I run without monitors/keyboards/etc. the only cables attached are power and network. The servers are P200's with not enough RAM and whatever spare parts I can scrounge up for them and I admin them all using terminal services. Everything works fine and the uptimes are decent enough considering the power problems here. Due to a fixed frequency 19inch monitor, I had to shuffle video cards around till I found one that suited. This led me to attempt to remove all the unnecessary cards from the servers, just to make some spare parts available. This went fine until it became time to remove the VGA cards: the machines proceeded to boot up to the point where they would respond to ping requests, but then they'd reboot and repeat the process. I've had a reasonable search around and haven't found any definitive statement that says Windows 2000 can't run without a VGA card." What? You don't want to see the pretty GUI that Microsoft has spent billions in developing? You heathen!

"I have found a page saying that the Windows after XP will be the first to make it possible. There are expensive Compaq cards that make it possible I believe. but I think they require certain servers, and besides, my budget is $0. I am just wondering if the Slashdot community could offer any suggestions or leads?"
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Headless Windows 2000 Servers? More

Headless Windows 2000 Servers?

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  • have you tried that? sometimes the bios will tell windows to expect video. also, try disableing the video drivers in device manager, and then removing the card.

    you could also use linux/bsd/*nix :)

  • Why, oh why do they do that? ARRRRR! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Maybe if our editors stopped mocking the users with stuff like that crack about the 2k GUI (which I happen to like a whole lot), we'd have some quality shit going on here.

    I dunno. I just really wish they'd stop posting little one-liners after the text of the submission either a:mocking the poster, or b:saying something inane like "I only use windows for games, internet surfing, graphic design, sound editing, mp3 ripping and site authoring, but this looks cool, once Bill Gates comes and personally gives me a handjob while lining my birdcage with the XP source code."

  • How does $2 sound? (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I know your budget is $0, but if you can spare a few bucks you can get video cards for $2/ea. [yahoo.com]

  • Did a little poking around (Score:4, Informative)

    by krangomatik ( 535373 ) <rfujikawa@yahooL ... m minus math_god> on Monday April 22, 2002 @09:18PM (#3391627)
    I poked around microsoft's site and found this [microsoft.com] kb article about building server appliances, which may or may not meet your needs. I did notice that the hardware requirements for w2k pro, w2k server, w2k advanced server, xp, and xp pro all listed VGA display adapters as a requirement. I *think* that you may be able to get win2k datacenter servers without VGA boards, but those boxes are all designed around the vendors hardware so it would probably be pretty easy for them to drop VGA support if they didn't want it. I did think it was funny that Microsoft Services for Unix was a requirement for installing their Server Appliance Kit. I kind of expected them to use CIFS instead of NFS for some reason.....
    If I were you I'd just throw some cheap VGA board in there and not plug a monitor in. That way you can remote admin it with VNC or Terminal Services or pc anywhere(ugh!) or whatever, but if you run into "big trouble" you can always plug in a monitor/keyboard/mouse. Win2k is ROCK SOLID so I don't think you'll ever have problems with it :)

  • You don't want to see the pretty GUI that Microsoft has spent billions in developing? You heathen!

    i thought the average slashbot said that microsoft stole the gui.
    • Even if we're just talking about the chicago gui, that is a ripoff of the NeXT's appearance, which followed everyone and their mother using NeXT-look window managers on various unices.

      Of course, I can't prove that that was microshaft's motivation, but it really does seem very likely.

  • my almost-definitive statement (Score:5, Informative)

    by AdamBa ( 64128 ) on Monday April 22, 2002 @10:14PM (#3391996) Homepage
    I am pretty sure that the NT loader (that loads the kernel etc) has a check in it for the presence of VGA hardware.

    How sure am I? Well, before I left Microsoft, I was a developer working on headless support for Windows XP (work that I think will first appear in the server version of XP, which I think is going to be called Windows .NET server). And the dependency was there then in the shipped Windows 2000, so unless it was removed in a service pack, it is still there.

    Actually I'm surprised you can even get the machine booted far enough to ping it.

    There were some BIOSes out there that allow booting without VGA so it's not a pure BIOS limitation.

    There is a guide to "lights out operation" (a term Microsoft sometimes uses which may help you in your search) posted here [microsoft.com] on Microsoft's site. It is interesting for its hardware solutions but it is 3 years old and covers NT 4 (which did not have the VGA requirement).

    - adam

    • Some BIOSes won't boot without a video card. Some will. On the old Pentium motherboard I gained from upgrading my fiancee's machine, the original bios wouldn't allow booting without a vga card, but an upgraded bios (free from the website, of course), did.

      With an old 10 mbit ISA ethernet card, a 2 gig hard drive, and a debian boot disk, I configured a nice little stand-alone server, although I used a VGA card for setup. Tom's Linux Boot Disk (google for tomsrtbt) will auto-detect some NICs, and grab an IP address from DHCP automagically, so, with a bit of hacking, its probably possible to make a varient of tomsrtbt that allows SSH or telnet login, which would allow setup of a machine without a video card. My current headless linux box runs without a video card, floppy drive, or cd drive, although I'm using a windows machine with file sharing to fake a floppy and cd drive. :) It works perfectly, save for a small bug where my wtmp logs seems to fill up with garbage. (I think inetd is trying to launch login sessions to the vga terminals, and dying in odd yet wonderful ways that it never expected too). All in all, headless linux is a wonderful way of doing things, and a pure headless machine does increase physical security.

      Windows is a little braindead about video cards. For those of you that think an old 1 meg VGA video card will work, it doesn't really. Windows terminal services will only support whatever resolution that the physical vid card will support. However, other then needing a video card that can support the resolution you want to use, headless windows is workable. I ran a win2k adv. server at home for about 2 weeks as a headless DHCP/test server. (Yes, it was a legit copy, we had one from microsoft's big bag of shit that they'll send resalers for a reasonable price ($500/year)). One word of warning - I can upgrade a headless linux box with relative ease : for example, from debian stable to testing, and convert the filesystem to ext2 to ext3, without ever hooking up a monitor. However, I've seen windows machines pop up error messages to the local display without sending it to any terminal services displays, and I wouldn't be surpised if windows would pop up a prompt before it launched the terminal services server, which should effectively freeze a machine from remote access. My test server never BSOD, so I don't know how it handles that remotely (my guess is poorly though).

      For a lark, I would run windows headless (or in my case, because I wanted a test machine and ran out of monitors & desktop space), but for serious work, especially remote administration, my advice is: don't! Bad things will probably happen, and if your business depends on high uptimes, you'll be road tripping to see those remote machines sooner or later. :) Stick with linux, remote administration is possible, including software upgrades and patches. Properly administered, a linux machine shouldn't need physical maintainance except for hardware. (Assuming you do have your server on a UPS, but you do, right?)

      Just my $.02

      ~ Das

      • >For those of you that think an old 1 meg VGA
        >video card will work, it doesn't really.
        >Windows terminal services will only support
        >whatever resolution that the physical vid
        >card will support.

        I'm not sure where you read this, but from my experience this is not the case. I have a Win2K server here at home (yes it is licenced), and it runs headless with a shitty old 256k video card. On the console I can only get 16 colours at 640x480, but Terminal Services works happily at 1600x1200 in 256 colours.

        And about the uptime, well this machine had an uptime of nearly 4 months until we had a power cut. No I can't be bothered with a UPS for a home server, even though it handled our print server, file server, DNS, DHCP, Active Directory etc. It wasn't so much a matter of cost but space, and in any case I haven't needed a UPS since then (about 9 months ago).

        I should point out that I also have some headless *NIX boxes here too and the only reason they have video cards is a bios issue (damn these older motherboards!)
        • UPSs are cheap. I bought a cheap switched APC UPS from Staples for $40 that is good enough to keep a PC based server from resetting for a few minutes. Some hardware requires an active UPS (such as a Smart-UPS instead of a BackUPS), but PC hardware usually doesn't. I use the UPS on my file server, dhcp/boot server, and on my lanplex network switch, and it irons out a lot of the small resets that occur in my area.
    • I run several 2000 and NT servers that dont need VGA to boot. In the boot.ini (NT Loader cfg file) there is an option you can set for VGA Mode ( "/basevideo /sos"). This is the equivalent of Safe mode for NT and 2000, reducing the res + color pallette to 640x480@60 with 16 colors. It never has had anything to do with NT's detection of video HW, it just uses a basic driver in case you borked the refresh rate or something else.

      Terminal services needs to show you a desktop. If it cant load one itself or any video subsystem on the local machine, then how can it get the values to draw you a desktop remotely?
      Video driver fail...All dependent apps + services fail... Pinging is a network service, not dependent upon a gui. I'll bet you can even get to files and other services on that machine.

      You may want to throw a VGA card in there and configure a telnet server for 2000 and see if you can hit that from a workstation and get stuff done that way.

      -I Hate my job, shove it.

  • SAK (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The Server Appliance Kit [microsoft.com], though it lists a VGA board as a requirement, claims to install null drivers for the video board. It probably just needs a VGA board for the initial configuration, after which you'd make your system image and copy it to your thousands of other units (it is an OEM product, you know). But, since none of the products it's designed for would have any reason for having a head, it wouldn't be an operational requirement. And the cost is very much in line with your stated budget for the project.

  • The guy is illegally using the software... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Daniel Wood ( 531906 ) on Monday April 22, 2002 @10:29PM (#3392067) Homepage Journal

    Budget $0

    Windows 2000 Server - $700

    Now, his budget is $0 yet he managed to cough up $700 for EACH $150 MACHINE? Sorry guy, but next time just cough up $20 for a cheap video card. You don't even need a monitor to install something like the NVIDIA 128ZX($25 after shipping), drivers are already there. Just hit enter a few times after its been up a while and restart.

    Mod me to hell, whatever. You know this is what is really going on.

    • And we give a fuck, why? Or is the BSA trolling Slashdot now?

      Although Linux does run fine, headless. And a Win2K box would make a great terminal emulator off the serial port for maintenance.

  • For the love of God, spend some money!! (Score:3, Troll)

    by Wakko Warner ( 324 ) on Monday April 22, 2002 @11:39PM (#3392350) Homepage Journal
    I can't stand these "please help me. I want to get blood from a stone" Ask Slashdots. Sometimes you have to spend some money to get things to work satisfactorily. A PC simply will not boot without a video card. Buy one for each of your servers; a nasty old one can't cost more than $5. If you can't afford $25 or so, what on earth are you doing building computers with Win2K on them to begin with? (You *did* pay for that, didn't you?)

    - A.P.
  • While you have a VGA card and monitor attached so you can see what you are doing, delete the drivers for the video card and monitor, shut down, remove the video card, then restart.
  • Okay, this isn't a troll...I'm just curious - I'm a 100% Unix guy, and I'd just like to know what remote-administration options are built-in with Windows. I know you can use PCAnywhere, but I don't understand how anyone could consider it a "server OS" if you can't administer the damn thing remotely.

    (Like I said, if you can administer it remotely, then I'd love to be proven wrong...)

    • and I'd just like to know what remote-administration options are built-in with Windows.

      Ok, troll. Win2k comes with a Telnet server and Terminal Services [microsoft.com]

      Termainal services allows you to have the Windows GUI remotly, just PcAnywhere, exept it does not suck.

      I have used it over a 56k link to manage remote servers, and it's performance is supprising good.

      • Good, that is, as long as you are not interested in setting up processes as services, because many apps that normally allow you to do this when at the console get screwed up by a Terminal Services session. There are also a number of other gotchas to look out for when using TS. Many apps just casn't handle the idea of multi-user in the sense that TS brings to Windows. This is one of the reasons why using VNC can be a better bet.

        G

        • Just having terminal services on a win2k box makes it a little odd. I would say its flaky, but I pretty sure that there is some manual I haven't read that would explain it. Lets just say that it is different , and I'm not just talking about using it remotely. Standing in the server room trying to install any random bit of software on a terminal services machine can make you feel like the machine is possessed by Larry Moe or Curly.
          I have been using a combination of VNC and net meeting to run a w2k box in another city for the last year and a half. VNC is more reliable, Net meeting is faster ( and I can eavesdrop on the remote location too )
    • Win2k server have something called "Terminal Services," which are fairly similar to the product Citrix [citrix.com] offers. It's even multi-user.
    • The fact that Microsoft thinks it is just shows how clueless they are about this (something I was trying to remedy when I was there).

      You generally only need to attend to your headless machine when something goes wrong. So guess what goes wrong a lot...the network! So much for Terminal Services. Unless you have a second net card on an internal net (which you might want to have anyway as opposed to leaving a Terminal Services session on your public network)...but as you can see people care about having a *VGA* card in their servers, a second net card is even more $$$. If you are trying to get a 1U server in a rack, every bit of hardware counts.

      Anyway the proper way to do headless is over a serial port, to a command-line prompt. Sun boxes have a dedicated port for this; x86 Unix machines do this over a standard serial port; there are some non-Microsoft products for Windows 2000 that do this, providing a command-prompt you can connect to over a serial port, but they are hampered by a) the lack of command-line tools and b) the fact that they don't run at elevated priority so they won't work for a lot of hung systems. This should be much improved with .NET Server.

      - adam

    • The UNIX model is to log in remotely, and run everything locally. The Windows 2000 model is to log in locally, and point the admin tools on the local machine to the remote one, and play with it through RPC.

  • Headless servers - see MS kb (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Known fault

    http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=k b; EN-US;q312066

    It suggests getting a fixed ntldr from MS for free, but you can use the NT ntldr with 2k no probs (certainly on WS/Pro), so you may want to try the NT one first.

  • Bleeding edge (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dhopton ( 252883 )
    If you dont mind trying the "bleeding edge" you could call up your local MS subsib, and see if you can get a trial version of the beta of Windows.net server which will support being headless.

    As a side point, Win2k *does* support being headless - some of the SAN devices run Win2k Server Appliance Kit.
  • Wait for Dot-NET Server.
    It will have to work headless, or it will not work with blade-servers.
    If your budget is Zero, though, I suggest "other" Operating Systems, that have had no problems running headless for years
    ;-)

  • Just get a bunch of cheap old 2-4mb vga cards and throw them in just to shut it up. Consider yourself lucky the BIOS even lets you boot without a vga, most of them will just sit there and beep in panic.

  • Hmm (Score:2)

    by tkrabec ( 84267 )
    Just put in 2 Video cards. The one that works with your monitor for configuration purposes, then the other card for when you want to run the machine.

    -- Tim

  • Fresh experience from the hardware field (Score:3, Informative)

    by Gruturo ( 141223 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2002 @10:38AM (#3394526)
    I know Linux is not the topic of this thread, but what I have to say is about the underlying hardware, and not the OS:

    I run an always-on linux box at home (typical home gateway: masquerading firewall + DHCP + DNS + file server + SETI cruncher) and keep it in a quite tiny closet with almost no ventilation, so I wanted to run it *really* headless (no vid card at all) to also have a little thermal advantage (apart from freeing an IRQ). You know, serial console, serial LILO, getty on ttyS0.
    I've upgraded the mobo+CPU a couple times in the last years, and some mobos DO work without a vidcard at all (current Asus A7V333, previous Microstar K7266pro) while others (Soltek SL-75KAV) just wouldn't boot. (No, I didn't forget to set it up in the bios!).
    So, be sure the HARDWARE supports it!

    The fact that you insist on running the wrong OS on it is a whole different story then :-)

  • You cannot boot Windows NT 3.51, NT 4.0, W2K, or XP w/o a video driver. They just won't do it, "out of the box".

    The "embedded" versions of Windows NT (NT Embedded 4.0, the W2K SAK, or XP Embedded) contain a "Null VGA" driver that allows them to boot w/o a video card (also contain keyboard and mouse drivers that do the same). Take a look here [microsoft.com] for a marketroid overview, or here [microsoft.com] for a FAQ on NT Embedded 4.0 (Search for "Null" if you want to see the "headless operation" part-- I find it particularly interesting that they have an option for a serial console). (These "null" drivers were acquired from a 3rd party by Microsoft. I've looked at the DDK, and actually, it wouldn't be all that hard to implement a "null" driver for those services... maybe I ought to think about that.)

    For those who are development minded, it's worth it to take a look around the NT "embedded" pages at Microsoft. I really like the NT kernel (not the bag-of-crap that is Win32, mind you), and I like that Microsoft is letting you strip out the crap "features" and run "bare metal" on the native-mode kernel if you want.

    (I've always been convinced there's a Unix inside NT trying to get out... *grin* I'd love to roll an "NT distribution" that stripped out the GUI, and booted the Interix subsystem w/o Win32... Oh, well... I guess I'll just stick to tinkering w/ Linux.)

  • read the headline as "Heedless Windows 2000 Servers"?

  • For the reasons outlined in other posts you'll still need a video card.. but you wont need anything plugged into it.
    You can configure linux with serial console support and then run vmware on it with windows server inside it.
    We do this at work on many servers with great success.

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