VNC + Boot w/o keyboard, video & mouse

A bit of background:

I have several customer located servers (database, print, intranet etc)
located at customer sites. For security purposes & so the customer
employees don't mess with them these machines do not have any keyboards,
video, or mice attached to them. To access the machines I VNC across a
secure VPN (both remotely and locally when on site). They are currently
running Windows, but I am in the process of converting them over to linux.

In order to make the conversion to linux (Ubuntu) I've been testing a
couple of machines locally & have found that I cannot boot 6.061 without
an attached keyboard or mouse. I can of course boot with a keyboard &
mouse attached and then disconnect them. But that defeats the purpose of
being able to keep the systems isolated from curious hands.
On the Windows machines if I do an update, I can reboot the machines
remotely via VNC & have them come back up in the proper configuration. I
cannot do this in 6.061.

I have figured out how to overcome the problem of the 640x480 60hz video
screen default when no video monitor is attached[1], and now wonder if
anyone has any suggestions for doing the same with no keyboard & mouse.

Suggestions?



[1] This problem drove me crazy; the system would reboot without the
monitor, but *always* came up in the 640x480 60hz. I finally solved it
by manually adding the HorizSync & VertRefresh settings for the monitor
in xorg.conf. Example:

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "MegaImage 17"
Option "DPMS"
HorizSync 28-64
VertRefresh 43-100
EndSection

Without the HorizSync & VertRefresh settings, the systems alway booted
to the default when the monitor was not attached. They now pop right
into the proper resolution.


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