OpenSuse boot problems when no monitor is attached

Hello,

I installed OpenSuse 11.2 on a FIC ION A603 mini-PC with an AMD Geode processor. This machine is meant to be a thin-client but at 8 watts, it makes a wonderful home server.

~Welcome to First International Computer, Inc.~](http://www.fic.com.tw/product/minipc.aspx)

However, I can¿'t make the machine booth when a monitor is NOT attached to the machine. The PC seems to get past the P.O.S.T with minimal HDD activity, and then it simply hangs there, doing nothing. I know Linux is not booted because the HDD flashes briefly only 3-4 times and then absolutely nothing. When a monitor is attached, everything works perfectly.

I read somewhere that this happend when GRUB tries to display graphics, so I edited the menu.lst and removed the graphics line within it, which causes GRUB to display a B/W clear-text boot-menu (when a monitor is attached), but the machine still won’t boot with no monitor. I also edited inittab to boot to level 3, same outcome.

I would greatly appreciate any light you can shed on this issue.

More Info:
HW. FIC ION A603
~Welcome to First International Computer, Inc.~](http://www.fic.com.tw/product/minipc.aspx)
OpenSuse 11.2 - Almost default install
Added SW: VNC and Squid (both active on Init 3 and 5
Boot Loader: GRUB

Greetings from sunny México…

See if you have any settings in the BIOS to stop POST if certain peripherals are not found. I have seen such a settings with an IBM machine but it was just checking the Keyboard and Mouse.

Must be something peculiar to your system. All systems I know do not need a monitor during boot (or thereafter).

perhaps i should have mentioned that this machine ran windows xp pro for 4 years up until yesterday, with no monitor and no problems ever. I doubt bios would be the culprit since I didn’t change a thing…

Thanks so much for your help

Have you tried the following to get more information?

  1. Boot the machine without the monitor.

  2. Wait for the machine to hang.

  3. Plug the monitor into the VGA port and power on the monitor.

  4. Does the monitor show any sort of error message?

Plodder,

Thanks for the advise, however, after the given process, I connect the monitor back and all I can see is a blinking cursor (underscore). Nothing else works (pressing keys does nothing). Also, I tested booting all the way to GRUB’s menu, and then unpligging the monitor BEFORE the default wait period (8 secs) expires, and the result is the same. This would confirm it’s not a BIOS problem, and it happens AFTER loading GRUB.

Well that is interesting. I can only think it is some need of the linux kernel that the monitor has to be present.

Does your GRUB menu have a FailSafe option on it? If so, have you tried changing the default GRUB boot option to FailSafe?

I think a listing of:

/boot/grub/menu.lst

may be useful. Please post it here. In the meantime I will have a think (as indeed others will).

Hang in there!