Re: X-Terminals (was: [seul-edu] It's quiet--_too_ quiet.)

[jwaddell@ix.netcom.com]

Hi Ray,

Thought I might have seen that you are going about this incorrectly,
perhaps due for a reason, perhaps not.... :)

On Fri, 15 Oct 1999, Ray Olszewski wrote:

-->Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 11:36:15 -0700
-->From: Ray Olszewski <ray@comarre.com>
-->Reply-To: seul-edu@seul.org
-->To: seul-edu@seul.org
-->Subject: Re: X-Terminals (was: [seul-edu] It's quiet--_too_ quiet.)
-->
-->At 03:25 PM 10/14/99 -0400, you (Doug) wrote [in part]:
-->>...those of you who are
-->>setting up X-terminal systems on older hardware.  How about posting a
-->>note letting us know how you're doing and what problems you may have
-->>encountered?  Heck, we might be able to help you out!
-->
-->I've pretty much abandoned working on this, but I don't think I mentioned
-->the last experiment I tried. 
-->

Sorry to hear it, XTerms are a great way to reuse that old hardware.

-->As a result of a suggestion from Jose Lacal, I installed DR-DOS, some free
-->(or trial-period-free) DOS-based apps, and Monkey Linux (a loadlin-based
-->Linux) on a '485-40. Had some problems with the DOS apps (in particular, I
-->never could get the DOS-based Web browser arachne to run), but Monkey Linux
-->proved to be a very nice mini-Linux distribution. it included enough X
-->support to let me run X in 8-bit mode, using an old video card and the SVGA
-->server. 
-->

Anything 386 and above (preferable with 8M ram, but 4M will do in a pinch,
below 4M and while technically possible it is definately NOT worth it)
will make ok XTerms, if you set them up so they are manageable.

-->As a standalone system, it performed as badly as standalone X '486 systems
-->usually do. But with a few minutes of reconfiguring (really just modifying
-->xhost to permit remote apps to display on this host),

Ok if you want to test a few apps, but this is NOT the way to set up a
true XTerminal.  To set up an Xterminal you decide which box will be
serving the X Applications (including the windowmanager,gnome, kde,
whatever) and you run xdm (gdm, or kdm if you want to play with alpha
level software) on that application server.  You then set up a boot
sequence on the machine that is to be a terminal (booting from floppy,
rom, nfs, tftp, cdrom, or harddrive) that does the following, boot's to
network runlevel and in the inittab runs a script that {an example of a
working script for this can be found in SuSE's a packages on suse's that
will set a machine up to boot this way, I think it's called xdmterm or
something, can find out if you need to know...} along with running all the
normal getty's for virtual console runs a bare X server (the X server as
you will recall servers the physical display on a computer up to xclient
applications to use as their display) that queries the application server
for a GRAPHICAL login.  You can do that be hand, by first running xdm on
the application server, and then running X -query appservername, to help
you get started reading the info and/or man pages on xdm will help.   XDM
is how large installations (universities, etc) manage hundreds (perhaps
sometimes thousands) of xterminals on a network.....

--> it turned into a very
-->good XTerminal, providing smooth operation of a Netscape client running on
-->an applications server (I've always found Netscape sufficiently demanding to
-->be a good test).
-->

good.

-->In an environment where desktop clients needed to continue to run DOS or
-->Windows for other purposes, Monkey Linux is a definite candidate for
-->providing desktop access to Linux, particularly for providing inexpensive

the dosemulater (DOS-emu) is also a possibility depending on the
application as is the Windows Emulator (Wine).  For the guys with cash
they can use vmware to run the dos /windows programs....

-->XTerminal access to Linux applications servers. It's a Slackware-style
-->system that installs from a half-dozen floppies, and can be found in the
-->distributions directory at metalab. I'm not in a position to test it in an
-->actual school setting, but I'd be interested to hear from anyone who does do
-->so (and to the extent that I can do so remotely, I'd be glad to help set up
-->a test).
-->

once you have X terminals up and running you will want x2x (allows mouse
control from one X server to another) and greyboard for group activities.

Good luck

Sincerely,


Jeff Waddell
jwaddell@ix.netcom.com