Re: Introduction

[Rhandeev Singh <rhandeev@comp.nus.edu.sg>]

Hi Bill,

On Wed, 20 Jan 1999, Bill Tihen wrote:
> I have been considering doing something like thin x-clients too.  How are
> you planning to configure this?  Please help us all do this and take notes

I've never actually configured a thin client before, but I'd figure that
using initrd to load relevant modules and mounting NFS roots might be a
good idea. Someone was trying that on linux-net@vger.rutgers.edu, I think. 

That way you can administer all the machines from a central host (the NFS
server) without having to log into each one.  NIS/NIS+ will provide a
common UNIX login, and Samba will provide file and printer sharing as well
as authentication to Windows clients too.

So they can all login and access their home directories with one
username/password regardless of platform.

> and share with us.  How are you planning to allow floppy use?  I have not
> found it so easy to allow users to mount the floppies?  Even after

You can configure automount (autofs) for this.  I haven't tried floppies,
but it works for my CDROM drive.  This applies if you seldom take the
floppies out of the drive.

Alternatively, you could use mtools.  Mtools has the advantage of being
able to access dosemu virtual drives too.  This is especially useful for
running DOS-only utilities in an xdos window (e.g. a Mac unstuffer in my
case) and mcopy-ing the extracted files out while the xdos session is
still running.

And you don't have to worry about (un)mounting, even with real floppies.

When you consider that the xdos and xterm windows might be exported from
elsewhere, things start to get interesting ;)  You might even be able to
run vga-based educational software for MSDOS via dosemu.

Dabble with /etc/mtools.conf to get mtools working.

> that with good enough network access the floppies aren't that important,
> but still it comes up.

Floppies may be a bad idea because they allow kids to install all kinds of
strange things.  Although it doesn't really matter with Linux, with Loki
Entertainment around soon it will. 

OTOH, floppies are good because they allow kids to bring their home
directories home to play on their own (supposedly) Linux boxes.

Why not provide dialup services for the students?  Then they won't need no
steenking floppies anymore.  You can get one of those cyclades multiport
devices, etc.  See server-linux@netspace.org for more on the required
hardware.

---
Rhandeev Singh                          rhandeev@comp.nus.edu.sg
Linux User Group                        http://linux.comp.nus.edu.sg
School of Computing                     http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg
National University of Singapore