From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Dec 15 07:19:09 1995 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id HAA26635 for hackers-outgoing; Fri, 15 Dec 1995 07:19:09 -0800 (PST) Received: from bigbird.vmicls.com (bigbird.vmicls.com [198.17.96.3]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id HAA26622 for ; Fri, 15 Dec 1995 07:19:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from gonzo by bigbird.vmicls.com (8.6.12/SMI-4.1-vmicls-master-host-1) id KAA16168; Fri, 15 Dec 1995 10:21:40 -0500 From: Jerry.Kendall@vmicls.com (Jerry Kendall) Organization: VMI Communications and Learning Systems Received: by gonzo (5.0/vmi-client-host-1) id AA17537; Fri, 15 Dec 1995 10:21:39 +0500 Date: Fri, 15 Dec 1995 10:21:39 +0500 Message-Id: <9512151521.AA17537.gonzo@vmicls.com> To: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Diskless systems X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk Greetings fellow earthlings..... I have finished getting my diskless server running X..... I have XDM running on my Pentium with 16 Megs of ram and lots of disk space.. I have setup my old 386DX-40 to be a diskless X terminal running FreeBSD 2.0.5R and X. The diskless X terminals hierarchy on the Pentium is about 3 Meg in size... Not bad eh??? See below for info. The 386 will boot to a 'config.sys/autoexec.bat' DOS menu system. I select the X-terminal option and it boots over the net from the pentium. I loads /kernel which does it's thing, runs /etc/rc which will run /sbin/ifconfig for the ethernet adapter card, then it mounts the roots FS(it was mounted READ-ONLY at boot) with READ-WRITE perms, it then mounts a nother FS from the Pentium that has the fonts(XFS uses about 1 Meg of ram) available, At this point it loads the X server in query mode to connect to the Pentium. I have now got 2 seperate 386 class systems running as X terminals, Each requires about 1.5 Meg of stuff in its roots filesystem, the rest that each needs is located in a common location. Total space by both: 4.75 Meg, 1.25 Per system and 2.25(Shared, via NFS) for the minimal X. The exact details I can supply to all he would like them. I am going to spend the next few days(probably weeks) creating a 'HOW TO' guide and then post it to FreeBSD.org... Hopefully Jordan and the gang will add it to the handbook. Any way, I will be doing this from home(jerry@kcis.com), so if interm assistance is needed by some one, feel free to send me the details(to jerry@kcis.com).... Yes I have registered in the hackers list there as well as here(at work). BTW: the same setup can be used to implement full FreeBSD diskless systems, this is where I started from.... Jerry