Video card question

[James R. Van Zandt]

Chuck Young <cyoung at bbnplanet.com> writes:
>I want to build a firewall on a 486, but I have no monitor and plan to use
>telnet from inside to get a connection.
...
>I doubt it will boot without a video card, but this interests me too.

Check out this configuration option of recent kernels (2.1.71 in this case):

Console on serial port
CONFIG_SERIAL_CONSOLE
  If you enable this option, it is possible to use a serial port as the
  console. By default still the virtual console will be used at the
  system console but you can alter that using a kernel command line
  option. If you don't have a VGA card installed the kernel will
  automatically use /dev/ttyS0 as system console if this option is
  enabled.

I have not tried it myself.

                           - Jim Van Zandt