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I'd like to setup a headless system, but it only seems to boot if a monitor is plugged in.

The motherboard is an Asus ROG Maximus Ranger VII, the CPU an Intel i7 4790K and it's running VoidLinux.

With a monitor, I get to the console as expected, I can remotely ssh, everything is fine. Without a monitor, I can't ssh and the system shuts down instantly when I press the power button, suggesting it didn't even make it to POST. Plugging in the monitor afterwards doesn't give any output.

I didn't find any relevant BIOS options to mess with. Is this expected? Is the only solution to get a dummy graphics dongle?

PS: @ChanganAuto got me thinking that this could be an OS issue (which I immediately discarded because it booted with a screen), so I dug some more and tried to add nomodeset to linux cmdline and GRUB_TERMINAL=console to /etc/default/grub but it still didn't work. Is there anything I can do to try and pinpoint the problem to either hardware or software?

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  • It's a gaming motherboard, certainly not designed for your intended usage.
    – ChanganAuto
    Commented Nov 24, 2023 at 19:05
  • 2
    Search the BIOS for an option such as "Wait for F1 if there is error" and disable it, if found.
    – harrymc
    Commented Nov 24, 2023 at 19:47
  • @ChanganAuto By that logic, only server motherboards would ever be posted on r/homelab.
    – Olivetree
    Commented Nov 24, 2023 at 22:04
  • @harrymc Good call! I tried to press F1 a while after it booted and then I tried disabling the setting. Nothing worked.
    – Olivetree
    Commented Nov 24, 2023 at 22:04
  • No, that isn't the logic. The logic is server dedicated hardware expects to do just that. Other might not and especially something intended to have 2, 3 or more monitors. But the hardware itself may have nothing to do with it at the end of the day and it can be something in the OS. I know nothing about the very niche Void Linux. I also don't do r/, at all.
    – ChanganAuto
    Commented Nov 24, 2023 at 22:08

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Seems like the problem is that the BIOS is trying to display on the monitor during the boot, and when it finds out that there is a problem with the non-existent monitor, waits forever for the user to press F1. Setting the BIOS option to not wait for F1 is the only option left for real headless boot, but is unfortunately not working.

You may check if you have the "latest" BIOS version, which dates unfortunately from 2018. Given this date, it's unlikely that this board is still actively supported by Asus.

If the presence of a monitor is absolutely necessary for the boot, you could perhaps install a dummy dongle, such as for example the HDMI Dummy Plug,Headless Ghost, Display Emulator, which are in general very cheap devices.

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