Installation on x86 device with no vga port

RouterOS General
1

Hi, can anyone help how to install routerOS software on x86 platform with no vga, how can we redirect output to serial port at startup as we can do in linux by editing GRUB to specify serial connection details. thanks

PC Engine compatible?
2

I had done by editing /syslinux.cfg file inside bootable USB flash drive.
My device is PC Engines APU2, it doesn’t use EFI boot.

  • Write “install-image-7.x.img” to USB Flash Drive. (don’t write “.iso” file)
  • Mount USB-FD on Linux. (Windows can’t mount this USB-FD.)
  • Edit “syslinux.cfg” file.

After editing,

$ cat /mnt/syslinux.cfg
SERIAL 0 115200
CONSOLE 0

default system

LABEL system
        KERNEL linux
        APPEND console=ttyS0,115200n8 load_ramdisk=1 -install -hdd

This works for me.

Install on CF Card
3

Or just install it on any other PC or VM then move the disk to headless setup. As long as CPU is in the roughly same class there will be no problems, there is nothing machine specific configured/installed during install. License is only bound to the drive you install ROS to. I have several ROS installs on USB flash drives and they are very much universal, you can plug them into any server/PC and they will always boot up and bring up the console.
For headless setups I found setting up USB serial console or USB LAN config is compatible across different PCs/hardware as well, so that’s the way to go on any modern boards that may not even have serial port…

4

Thanks guys, it was really helpful, I was able to install using serial console, just to add when box was restarting after installation, was loosing output again but then figured out that terminal baud rate has to set to 9600 which is default value for Mikrotik.

5

Hi there, thanks for sharing your experience. I tried but it did not work as expected.
My device (https://www.aaeon.com/en/p/desktop-network-appliance-fws-2360) is an Atom C3850 based with six ethernet ports without VGA, but one console (ethernet RJ4 port liked).
I confirmed the BIOS setting of COM0 Console Redirection (P38 of manual below) is:“115200bit/s, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, and no parity”
Boot the device in the non-UFEi boot using the same config you provided.
However, it doesn’t continue the boot process; it reboots.

What is your suggestion? @trkk


https://newdata.aaeon.com.tw/DOWNLOAD/MANUAL/FWS-2360%20manual%203rd%20Ed.pdf