On Fri, Jul 22, 2016 at 3:03 PM, gregrwm <tclug1 at whitleymott.net> wrote: > booting a centos7 cd displays a blank white screen via serial. perhaps the > centos7 cd doesn't handle booting a serial console? or perhaps it does with > some special interaction? anyone know? You need to pass serial parameters to the kernel at boot time. There should be docs out there on doing this. https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Installation_Guide/ch-Boot-x86.html#s2-x86-starting-bootopts That's for 6, but I would imagine the process is similar for 7. > or perhaps it would be less of a waste of time to install some other > distribution whose install cd just works via serial. does ubuntu? or > something else? I found this howto when I needed to install Debian 8 to a serial only system. Worked like a charm. http://pcengines.info/forums/?page=post&id=51C5DE97-2D0E-40E9-BFF7-7F7FE30E18FE Brian