At work, I'm trying to get Linux running on a machine that has neither screen/keyboard, IPMI, nor LOM. It has lots of ethernet ports, so SSH is the only option, but I can't get SSH working. This is rather difficult, because I have to plug the drive into another computer to make any changes. It's a totally non-interactive process.
Does your machine have a serial port? If you are building the kernel yourself, you can enable the serial console and connect with a terminal program from another computer, like the cavemen used to. Then get ssh working from there without messing around with moving the drive around.
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The machine has a serial port, though I haven't figured out how to enable a TTY on that port. But I got SSH working today, so now I'm focused on other more pressing issues for this machine. But I'll have to revisit the serial port eventually, because that'll be needed in case SSH fails.
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