Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 21:27:20 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: <david.groves@imagination.com>, <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Using PC's as X Terminals Message-ID: <001b01c0ddc0$7f133b40$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <3B011EA3.5234DB81@imagination.com>
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It would seem to be that the easiest thing would be to create a small partition, like 200MB, on the disk and put a bare-bones FreeBSD on it. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com >-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of David Groves >Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2001 5:19 AM >To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG >Subject: Using PC's as X Terminals > > >I'm trying to find a way to turn client machines (i386 machines running >other operating systems that can't be replaced), into dumb X terminals >on a part time basis. The people that will be using them are mainly >going to be running windows the majority of the time, but will have the >need to dip into an X environment on occasion. For various reasons, my >superiors are unwilling to consider Win32 X servers, so this isn't an >option for me. > >The ideal solution from my point of view is to have a removable boot >disk which you insert when you want to use the machine as an X terminal. >The X terminals will then usually be used to connect to a single >machine, the lab "workstation". However they will occasionally need to >connect to other hosts, so I'm going to need to run the "chooser". > >1.) Have the entire system on the boot media, ie. the kernel, the X >server, and the other bare minimum things needed to get a system up and >running. > >2.) Do a netboot. Boot from a floppy which does something like etherboot >to bring up a working system. > >===== > >Questions. > >a.) If I use option 2, can I NFS mount all the file systems needed by a >bunch of heterogeneous clients from the same place. If I can, what >configuration issues do I have (like /tmp). > >b.) If I use option 1, what do I do about files that need to be written. >Can I easily use something like a ramdisk with FreeBSD (I imagine I >can), or a NFS mount (which gets me back into the same problems as (A). > >c.) Something totally different, the totally obvious solution that I've >missed. > >d.) What is the 'chooser'. AFAICT, it is a prompt for what machine you >want to serve up your X session from. The XDM documentation has me >scratching my head to figure this out though. > >e.) Also, what are the security concerns here. I know I'm going to be >using a lot of potentially icky things, like NFS with it's trust of >client UID's, possibly TFTP with it's problems. I can accept some >security trade-offs in my environment (which is well contained), but I >want to know what problems I may have to worry about in the future. > >-- >____________________________________________________________________ >Imagination 25 Store Street South Crescent London WC1E 7BL England | > Tel +44 20 7323 3300 Fax +44 20 7323 5801 | > _______________________________________________________| > >To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org >with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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