Hi,
recent HP servers do have an SD card slot which is suitable to host a rescue system. The same approach also applies ot an USB stick that can be pushed into a port and selected from the remote console.
Of course, the easiest way to have this is just dd'ing an grml iso to the medium and then plugging it in without more ado.
In the HP case, one needs a special license to have access to the graphical console. Some systems (for example the rather common MicroServer Gen8) also need a license to get access to the text console. The only thing that one gets on the Microserver Gen8 without inserting more coins is a virtual serial console, which is suitable to access the BIOS and boot an OS that can use a serial console. With grub, one can even boot a regular Linux OS with seeing the boot manager on the virtual serial port.
Unfortunately, grml has a graphical selection screen for the choice of boot option. This makes it impossible to select a boot option or give additional parameters without the "big", expensive license.
Is there a possibility to remaster grml without the graphical boot screen? Having a classical text oriented ISOLINUX screen is fine, having ISOLINUX present that option on ttyS0 instead of a console would be perfect.
Actually, I would love to have the possibility to do a simple patch in an otherwise unchanged grml image so that my ProLiant grml is as close to "release" grml as possible. I would appreciate a hint if that is already possible.
While I do understand that having a nice-looking selection screen is nice and important for user acceptance, this severely reduces grml's attractivity for the server jockey who usually doesn't have graphical access to the systems.
Greetings Marc