Date: Sat, 19 May 2001 10:23:39 -0400 From: "G. Jason Middleton" <gmiddl1@gl.umbc.edu> To: Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com> Cc: <david.groves@imagination.com>, <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Using PC's as X Terminals Message-ID: <Pine.SGI.4.31L.02.0105191022320.9356132-100000@irix2.gl.umbc.edu> In-Reply-To: <006701c0deac$cba36c40$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
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You mean you can actually have a machine boot from the netowkr to run X? I mean you can have a central server that has say bootp running and have cleint achines actualy boot fron it and run X windows? Just wondering. Thanks, Jason On Thu, 17 May 2001, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: > And a Win32 Xterm, even a free one, is not an option? What if > the Win Xterm code is contained on a floppy? This I guess I > don't understand the most - your superiors want to be able to > use these systems part time as Xterms, but they aren't even willing > to put a free Win32 xterm program on them? What gives? > > 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 4:50 PM > >To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG > >Subject: Re: Using PC's as X Terminals > > > > > >David Groves wrote: > >> > >> 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 > > > >Thanks to everyone so far for the help. Sadly none if it is actually > >useful to me for various reasons. > > > >Ted suggested creating a bare bones partition on the disk, this isn't an > >option because part of the specification for the project states that the > >machines can't be touched, and this would involve attacking them with > >partition magic or something. We can boot from either CD or floppy > >though. > > > >Doug and Matt both suggested using VNC. I'm a great fan of VNC, and in > >fact we already use it for various things, but I feel that either using > >that, or using the Cygnus XFree86 port to Win32 would be the best > >option. Cygwin XFree86 (http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/xfree/) seems > >to me to be 100% reliable, can be used on any windows machine (although > >it works notably faster on NT than on 9x), and could be configured to > >connect to a FreeBSD machine running XDM. For various reasons though, > >this isn't an option (mainly that my superiors don't like it). > > > >I'm going to plug on with remote booting client workstations with > >etherboot. Afaik, I can mount the following partitions read-only without > >problems :- > > > >/ > >/bin > >/etc > >/sbin > >/usr > > > >I'm less sure about > > > >/var > >/tmp > > > >In fact, I'm going up a path I don't know a lot about here. > > > >Ideally I'm searching for a disk that makes a machine an X terminal. It > >doesn't have to be doing anything unixy underneath, it doesn't have to > >be using FreeBSD, it can be doing anything. It just has to work. > > > >My prowling of the web found numerous articles suggesting ways you can > >use Linux to do it, but all of them were assuming you could use a small > >amount of disk space local to the machine. Although I can have a large > >amount of read only data space (booting from CD), I can't have much RW > >(the spare space on a floppy is all, and that is always going to be > >dreadfully slow and unreliable). I could also of course create a RAM > >disk. > > > >I also found (http://www.freebsd.org/tutorials/diskless-x/index.html). > >It is long time out of date, but if you change most of it to use > >Etherboot instead of the remote boot stuff in the FreeBSD core (the > >comments in /usr/src/.../wherever/the/remote/boot is suggest removing > >that part of the code because of etherboot) then this should still work. > > > >I'm still worried about the sharing of the file systems by numerous > >clients (particularly /tmp and /var), and the security problems of > >NFS/TFTP. Any comments ? > > > >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 > G. Jason Middleton _______________________________________________________________________________ "Insert quote here" To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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