Solaris

howdy,

I have a couple of headless Solaris 8 servers i can access via ssh for basic periodic patching.

I would like to use the X server to access some of the apps that reside there also, but when i start X it errors out, complaining it can't find /dev/fb.

Is there a way to bypass the /dev/fb issue, since it seems to be looking for a monitor specific file (i think)?

Check to see if /dev/fb is linked to anything - if not, you can set it up but may have a problem with booting into multi-user mode.

First, check what output-device is equal to in the output of the eeprom command.
(Save the output as you might need it later - best to save it in a file on another system).

Shutdown the system, setenv output-device screen. Boot -sr to reconfigure into single user mode. This should create your /dev/fb. Shutdown and setenv output-device back to original setting.

Reboot and see if you can now start up X-applications.

Wow! Couldn't I just flip a switch er somthing?

I only get to visit these machines one day each week, therefore it might be a while before I get this worked out, so anything that springs to mind is welcome. Thanks a lot for the suggestion.

It sounds like console access is going to be required - at least for the reboot into single user, no?

If I follow the instructions, will that kill the console port access?

I checked in /dev and there is no "fb" there, as was reported by the X error message.

No, there is no switch to flip.

Yes, console access would be needed - either a dumb terminal or laptop to serial port A for single user mode unless you have a console set up already (you should think about that if you don't want to visit the server when you have a problem that required only console access to fix it). If you do have console access, doing this should not kill that access (nothing in life is guarenteed ).

The best way to prevent this is to insure in building the system you put a 'head' on it - once removed it still allows X to work since /dev/fb is there. I have 20+ servers set up for Naviscore/HP Openview that use X with no problem even though there is no Monitor on the server.