Someone has asked me for some more details about using older machines, so here are a few ramblings that I thought may be of interest to a few more people on this list ...

In a recent suse email you stated that you used discless pcs as work stations.

Well, not exactly work stations - I have them booting up (we were investigation using them in a beowulf cluster). Someone did say that it is possible to use older machines, as long as you have a nice and beafy server to actually run the apps (I think he said he used 512 Mb RAM or something ...) I am not sure how much you know about Linux and networking, so please excuse me if I am explaining things you already know about ... Anyway, in order to get the machines booting, you have to do the following (high level discussion first, then perhaps some pointers to detail :-) 1. Boot from floppy or the network (floppy was easiest for me). 2. Kernel that boots from the floppy must be configured for an 'NFS root file system'. This means that once the kernel has booted, it will mount all its disk space remotely from the server. 3. Server allocated IP addresses to the clients (this happened using the 'RARP' protocol) - so again, kernel support for RARP was required. Also the server had to be running a 'RARP' server. 4. Server had an area on its disk that was basically a complete disk image for each client. In reality, this is actually a disk image using symbolic links to permit the clients and the server to share certain common directories and files. Pointers to documentation on this (maybe in order of relevance ?) : - Thinclient howto (not read this but sounds just the thing :-) - Diskless howto documents (a little out of date but covers the basics) - Diskless-Root NFS howto (the main one for you) - NFS root mini howto (may be obsolete by the above) - NFS root client mini howto (again may be old now) - Beowulf howto (additional reading perhaps) - Boot disk howto (may have some useful bits too) - Remote boot mini howto - Remote X apps mini howto See http://www.linuxdoc.org for the howto documents. Once the machines are up and running, you have various levels of networking that you can achieve : 1. Server is a file server only - In this case, the server provides the file system and applications, but the applications actually run on the client PCs. This is no good to you as your machines are not up to the task of running star office ! 2. Server is a multi-user machine - In this case, the 486 PCs are basically just remote terminals to the server. The 486s are configured to run an 'X terminal' session (via xdm or somesuch) to actually logon and run applications on the server. Basically, in this scenario, all applications are actually running on the server, but the graphics display (output) and keyboard/mouse (input) are redirected over the network to your 486 terminal. As the 486 only has to run the display management and handle keyboard/mouse and ethernet events it should be ok. One last point - it could be worth getting in touch with your local user group, to see if there is anyone local to you who may have done this. Remember though, that Linux is their hobby, they are no substitute for proper 'paid for technical support'. They may well be as knowlegeable or forthcoming, but they may not (or may not be today, or may just be busy, etc :-) Anyway, see http://www.lug.org.uk for a list. Hope This helps, Kevin (Northants Linux Users Group)