Bug 347240

Hi,

In some situations, there is a headless Server (with damaged Video Card)
that I would like put to use. It is extremely difficult
to try to revive such systems via PXE or other methods.

The best solution for such a case would be adding an option to install
the openSUSE OS via Serial COM port.

Good News, is that most building blocks for doing that are already present,
just some small modifications are needed;

The setup must work from standard setup DVD, with the exception
that control is performed via Serial Terminal Line (/dev/ttyS0) instead of standard way: Monitor, Keyboard and Mouse.

The building blocks -- The Requirements: 
1. GRUB must be Text-Mode compatible.
2. GRUB must redirect output to /dev/ttyS0.
3. Kernel must redirect output messages to ttyS0.
4. Yast already supports text-based setups, so redirecting it to ttyS0 should be easy.

Problems 1,2,and 3 are explained in my own How-To:
http://forgeftp.novell.com/lfl/.html/howto-access-com.html
Problem 1: One way is to disable gfxboot, the other way is explained here:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=347236

As a testing ground, Qemu/KVM could be used. When you press ctrl+alt+F3, you
see your PC like from a serial console.

-Technologov, 10.Dec.2007.