QA:Setting-up-PiKVM

Installing the system

Unless you have a pre-installed device and I have no idea if something like that exists, you will need to flash a micro-SD card with the system. To do so:

1. Get a Micro-SD flash card with at least 16GB, but more is better because you will need the space to hold some installation images.
2. Refer to the tutorial for details and download links.
3. Pick up the PiKVM v3 HAT BOX Image OLED/FAN image which matches the device we currently have ready for testing.
4. Pick up the sha1 to check the sanity of the image.
5. Decompress the image

   sudo xz --decompress downloaded-image.img.xz

6. Copy the image onto the flash disk

   sudo dd if=downloaded-image.img.xz of=/dev/sda4

7. Put the card into the PiKVM’s card slot.

Using PiKVM

For detailed information, refer to the tutorial. The following are the most important highlights that I had to do to make the device working.

How to find the device?

So, if you know that you and the device are on the same network, but you cannot check the device’s state display that shows the acquired IP address among some other details

1. Scan the network for live devices and their mac-addresses

   sudo arp-scan --localnet

2. Find the device and its IP address in the output.

Connecting to the device

The device has two ways you can connect to it

1. the PiKVM web interface (admin:admin), that enables you to control the remote computer and manage the settings for such a control. Also a web console is provided to perform administration tasks to the PiKVM’s operating system. To use this type of connection, open a webbrowser and point to https://192.168.1.25.

2. the ssh connection (root:root) to manipulate the PiKVM’s operating system. Connecting and controlling the connection is not possible.

3. the vnc connection (admin:admin) that enables you to control the remote computer, but you cannot manage any settings as the entire VNC stream is basically the output of the connected machine. To use this, you have to install the tigervnc package, or any other VNC client. Then open the connection with

   vncviewer 192.168.1.25:5900

Changing the passwords

When you want to change the passwords, you can do it via SSH or a Web Terminal (part of the Web Interface).

To change the Web Interface password

    rw
    kvmd-htpasswd set admin
    ro

Note, that you need to remount the mounted drive so that it becomes writable, because it is not writable by default. You do it with the rw command. After you have performed the task, set the drive to read-only again using ro.

To change the root password.

    rw
    passwd root
    ro  

You can read more in the PiKVM Handbook, As this step has already been performed, you will not be able to change anything down there.

Recquired postinstall settings

Updating the system

The image is based on Archlinux and at the time of installation, it will be already outdated. To update the system to the latest state of the art, use

    sudo pacman -Syu

Setting up EDID information

The default EDID might not be correct for the computer that PiKVM is connected to. Therefore one needs to change the EDID information. Currently, this is not possible by some dynamical means and we need to update correct files. The process requires to perform several steps and as they are well documented, refer to the PiKVM Handbook.

Setting the kvmd-janus service

This is only needed if you want to be using the WebRTC protocol to send the screens. By default, this is using IPv6 over some Google STUN servers which might not work in corporate network setups. Override the settings in /etc/kvmd/override.yaml and add a janus section to it:

janus:
    stun:
        host: stun.tng.de
        port: 3478
    media:
        ipv6: false
        ipv6_linklocal: false

If this server settings does not work you, pick up another STUN server from the list of STUN servers.

Conclusion

If you have set all the things as described, you should be able to connect PiKVM to the selected computer and begin experimenting with it.