Linux-Based Thin X-Terminals? 14
Yet Another Anonymous Coward asks: "How easy is it to set up Linux boxes as thin clients? My boss wants to use some old 486 boxes as X terminals, networked to a largish server where all applications are run. Has anyone tried this? What is the minimum software that needs to be installed on the X terminal systems? My boss likes open source software because it saves money; Is this another way he can save money?" Obviously the use of older machines is going to ease
the costs of putting PCs on employee's desks, but are there other advantages (or disadvantages) to a setup like this?
It works nicely (Score:3)
I'm sysadmin at a residential college in Australia, and we've got a couple of low-end pentiums set up as thin X-terminals. They work quite well. The performance is perfectly usable.
Basically all you need to do is a minimal install of your favourite distro (we use Slackware). Make sure you've got X and networking, and that's all you need. You don't even need any X apps... so it doesn't take very much space on a disk.
Then just configure it to use runlevel 4. A line like this in your rc.4 file works nicely: exec /usr/X11R6/bin/X -query myserver.mydomain
A quick peek at one of our boxes revealed it only uses 60Mb of disk space... and we haven't gone to any effort at all to trim it. Of course, it helps to use Slackware and not Redhat ;)
If you really want to save on client disk space, you can always install a kernel that mounts its root fs over NFS. You still need a little bit of disk space though, for swap - unless your 486s have plenty of RAM. X tends to be a little RAM hungry, as we all know.
And seeing as the CPU is going to be idle a lot of the time, you can always install an RC5 cracker or Seti@Home if you like :) Andrew.
Information on diskless client setup for Linux/X (Score:1)
I have used this as the basis for setting up an X terminal booting off a server for both x86 Linux and sparc Linux. Took a bit of messing about, but fairly easy to do.
At the risk of drawing some heat, the whole diskless X client thing may be an interesting option to look into with StarOffice...
No Problem (Score:2)
Change the link in
Red Hat 6 uses a TrueType-capable font server by default. To use use the same fonts on all boxes, change the font server initscript in
Change the
Edit the inittab at each terminal so that the runlevel is 5 and the line that calls prefdm to start X looks like this:
Configure the kdm login dialog for your needs by editing the kdmrc file. On Red Hat with KDM installed from RPMs, the file is at
I'm not at home now, so I'm working from memory. I don't think I've missed anything.
My old P60 has been given a new lease on life. I was about to get rid of it. Now all I need is a bigger monitor and a better video card. Any old Pentium or good 486 with at least 16MB RAM can give acceptable performance as an X-Terminal. I may buy a couple of second-hand boxes to flesh out my network.
--Tony
Slightly offtopic question (Score:1)
I could never get my linux box to to the same thing. X would start on my box instead of just pipeing the apps to the client. What needs to be configured to set it up? Someone told me it was a kernel patch that I needed but I never found anything like that. It was a slackware 3.5 box. I tried back when I was a newbie with no luck. Now I'm just "a busy" with no time.
Diskless Linux Workstations (Score:1)
Easy (Score:1)
Examples of configuration for XDM / linuxgazette (Score:2)
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue27/kaszeta.htm
It explains in detail how to setup a machine to become an X-term, and some tips to make xdm look nicer!
antoine
Done that - it's easy (Score:3)
The first solution is to set up a full X server on a floppy-based Linux distribution - you can take a look at muLinux (http://mulinux.nevalabs.org [nevalabs.org]). This solution requires 16MB RAM, in order to expand X to a RAM disk. muLinux is extremely loaded, given that it fits into one, two, three or four floppies (depending on your needs - I think you will stick with two).
A much lighter solution would be to use a smaller and more specialized distribution, such as LODS (Linux One Disk Svncviewer, http://home.rochester.rr.com/specht/lods/ [rr.com]) - It has nothing but the minimum necessary to boot and fire svncviewer, a simple bash with the most basic commands, an editor to modify it... And, I think, that's about it. LODS is based on another minidistribution, Hal91 (http://home.sol.no/~okolaas/hal91/hal9 1.html [home.sol.no]), and is fairly easy to configure and modify. In fact, if you are interested, I can send you the images I use at my workplace - it just boots and fires svncviewer, which connects to your vncserver and looks just like X. Users may even think it is a diskless terminal, takes not more than two minutes to load... and, basically, works great
I use it on 486/33 machines with 16MB, though I'm sure it will fit on 8MB RAM. Mail me if you need more info.
consideration (Score:1)
The point is, in this model you're going to be putting a bigger load on your network, don't forget that. Also, X traffic is considered a security problem in some corporations and is blocked. At the least make sure the xhosts is set up to block people from mucking with each others' displays (had hours of fun with that!).
Linux Thin Client (Score:1)
Work Great and is Less Filling (Score:2)
i do this a lot. (Score:1)
Compaq T1500 (Score:1)
ago), which is a Linux based thin client.
See:
http://www.compaq.com/products/thinclients/inde