[mdlug] Small Monitors.

[David Favro]

Garry Stahl wrote:
> Also for headless, what you advise for control.  I would like to run it
> GUI from the main machine, over LAN, but I don't want the stereo to see
> or be seen by the WAN.  No browser, no mail.  No office suite for that
> matter.
I think you have many options... since you say you want to run it from
the "main machine", I don't see why you need any monitor on the "stereo
machine", so why not headless?  If you're just trying to play music
through the stereo while you hack/surf, a much easier hardware solutions
is just to run audio cables from the main-machine's sound-card to the
stereo.

On the other side of the spectrum, if money is no object, one idea that
intrigues me is using a headless box on the stereo and control it from a
802.11-capable handheld.  Then you have your small screen, but rather
than sitting over on the stereo, it will be with you -- carry it around
the house like a remote-control that doesn't need line-of-sight like IR
solutions require.

For software, you have many options, though in my opinion few, if any,
are very good.  If you run a text-based solution on the headless, you
can just ssh to it from the handheld/main-machine; if graphical, you
could X-server remote-display it.  Some solutions have client/server
modes, usually utilizing HTTP+HTML.  Another idea is to keep the media
collection not on the headless stereo-box, but on some other server
(probably your "main machine"), and either access it from media-playing
software running on the headless box via NFS or SMB (yuck and yuck) or a
connection to a SQL server (reasonable), or by running the
media-librarian software on the server, controlling it from the
handheld, and just streaming the "currently playing" item to the
media-box over TCP to be decoded and fed to the sound-card (or video if
you also connect it to the TV).  This allows the media box to be
super-lightweight since it needs little more than network stack, codec,
and sound-card.  But of course, if you keep the media files on the "main
machine", you can't listen to music unless it's running.

I think that the easiest way to config a headless machine is to pop in a
video-card+monitor, do a basic install+config, then yank the monitor (&
card if you need it elsewhere) and access from the net thereafter.