Re: laptop as a terminal

On Sun, 08 Oct 2006 07:23:57 -0700, Yan Seiner <yan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


I am about to get a headless server. I have an old laptop that I'd like
to use as a serial terminal.

The laptop will be off unless I need to access the server.

The goal is to set up this laptop to boot into minicom as quickly as
possible, and background all of the other stuff - network initialization,
and so - so that I can see what is going on. (the laptop is old and slow,
and I don't want to wait on it to boot up for several minutes.)

Can anyone suggest a way to do this? I'm not sure how to go about
backgrounding stuff but in such a way that it still boots in the right
order...

Try a distro that'll let you install as little as you want, like gentoo.
Maybe a distro that is designed for booting off a floppy?
Build a minimal kernel with just drivers for your hardware. Don't even
bother with sound or networking.
You should be able to get away without X; just use the console frame buffer.
No services; put minicom into rc.local. It shouldn't take a whole minute.
.