So I was running OpenSuse MicroOS on my Mini PC to make it as reliable and easy on maintainence as possible. Or that’s what I thought. It was running fine for a while but then I had to switch it off for longer periods at a time (like two weeks of, one day on, a few weeks off and so on). And then I would not turn on anymore. The PC is not in a very easily reachable position so I just tried again after a few days but it still didn’t work. Then I took it to my desk and hooked it up to the monitor and after selecting the last working snapshot of the OS it was booting all fine.
So in the end nothing was broken, everything was fine. But I really don’t want to take it out again so I am asking for advice. What are you doing in this case? Do you have a portable display or a very long HDMI cable? Or is there something I missed how I can select another snapshot over SSH or something?
Thanks everyone in advance!
I have a NUC setup that I use when I’m laying in bed reading and enjoying a bowl. For the monitor I use a cheap, portable bluetooth 15", and a cheap bluetooth keyboard, both of which, iirc, cost me less than $75. Maybe you could do something similar with the OpenSuse.
I use a PiKVM to manage my server at boot.
It streams video from the HDMI port so I can see what’s happening before SSH starts up, and plugs into a USB socket to emulate a remote keyboard.
I was just about to comment exactly the same!
Sometimes I’ll bring a keyboard and monitor to the PC, instead of bringing the PC to the monitor. Otherwise I just suck it up. I can’t justify the cost of a pikvm or drop-in ipmi.
I keep a monitor in my server closet and bring a USB wireless mini keyboard if I need to physically access something but the majority of my hardware has KVM built in.
Older commercial hardware uses more power than a mini computer in a homelab but has many advantages like often coming with more ram, more powerful (and often multiple) CPU’s, SAS backplanes, plus empty PCIe slots that can support GPU’s and other devices.
