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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • zork@lemmy.catoSelfhosted@lemmy.worldHow does PiKVM work?
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    2 years ago

    PiKVM is a collection of tools rolled into a distro to make keyboard/mouse input and attaching an emulated install media (virtual USB disk using ISO files) easily possible through a VNC-based web application. The idea is you can just build your own using the same software on different hardware, but it’s aimed at using a raspberry pi for low power consumption, portability, and it has specific hardware compatibility with a HAT/addon board. The software can also make “reverse connections” through a remote NAT for support purposes, and you’d just port forward on your end. There are a lot of well thought out features in PiKVM (hardware) that make it much more convenient than building your own solution. You could install PiKVM on a different system than a Pi and try to make it work with your configuration… You’d probably lose things like simulated power button press and virtual USB storage support. You might consider alternatives like PXE/netboot and wake-on-lan for those, but that might not always work for you.

    (YMMV, I have not tried running PiKVM on an x86 cpu)