Has anybody here tried to boot a PC with a bootPROM, and run linux off the net? This is something we used to do with PCs back when many data entry shops were still running everything over X-terms to shared minicomputers. A few years later some one came up with the bright ideas of a "network computer" which was a very thin client that loaded programs over the net. I was rather amazed they thought this was a new idea. You may be asking yourself why anybody would want such a system. Well if you are reading this, you are probably not the person who would use such a PC. Suppose you had a company which ran a call center. You would likely have many people doing the exact same set of tasks which require the exact same kind of setup. If all your systems ran off the same network image of the OS you would not need to manage each install separately. Additionally, if you had identical hardware in each system, you would not even have to fuss with different drivers. Of course you would want the ability to support variations in hardware without having to create a completely different system image on your server for each desktop variant. My experience was that hardware with the same brand model and version could vary in chip set from one instance to another thus requiring different drivers or parameters. In the enterprise where I supported these diskless workstations it was necessary to have an OS license for each PC even though it was never installed on a hard drive. Such a set up is much cheaper to aquire and to maintain even with the cost of licensing of software. There are fewer components subject to failure. Security is better because no one can install their own software and no one can copy data to a floppy because there isn't one. You don't have to pay for hard drives. You plug the box in the wall and it works. (we also had to register its MAC address before every thing worked.) This is better than using X because the only time a large transfer of data needs to go across the network is when you boot or when you load a program. The processing is done on the local PC and only data reads and writes go across the net to a server. It seems a stupid question to ask because I am sure the answer is 'yes', but can Linux do that too? Does anybody do this currently? Steve
"Steven T. Hatton" wrote:
It seems a stupid question to ask because I am sure the answer is 'yes', but can Linux do that too? Does anybody do this currently?
I think these are what you want to read
From the howto packages located at the following place in SuSe 7.0
/usr/share/doc/howto/en/Diskless-HOWTO.gz /usr/share/doc/howto/en/Diskless-root-NFS-HOWTO.gz -- Togan Muftuoglu
A similar idea has been a dream of mine for a couple of year. Have the SuSE kernel, the X-server and KDE2 burned onto an EPROM, for nearly instant on, using ReiserFS, of course. JLK On Friday 09 February 2001 03:06, Steven T. Hatton wrote:
Has anybody here tried to boot a PC with a bootPROM, and run linux off the net? This is something we used to do with PCs back when many data entry shops were still running everything over X-terms to shared minicomputers. A few years later some one came up with the bright ideas of a "network computer" which was a very thin client that loaded programs over the net. I was rather amazed they thought this was a new idea.
You may be asking yourself why anybody would want such a system. Well if you are reading this, you are probably not the person who would use such a PC. Suppose you had a company which ran a call center. You would likely have many people doing the exact same set of tasks which require the exact same kind of setup. If all your systems ran off the same network image of the OS you would not need to manage each install separately. Additionally, if you had identical hardware in each system, you would not even have to fuss with different drivers.
Of course you would want the ability to support variations in hardware without having to create a completely different system image on your server for each desktop variant. My experience was that hardware with the same brand model and version could vary in chip set from one instance to another thus requiring different drivers or parameters.
In the enterprise where I supported these diskless workstations it was necessary to have an OS license for each PC even though it was never installed on a hard drive. Such a set up is much cheaper to aquire and to maintain even with the cost of licensing of software. There are fewer components subject to failure. Security is better because no one can install their own software and no one can copy data to a floppy because there isn't one. You don't have to pay for hard drives. You plug the box in the wall and it works. (we also had to register its MAC address before every thing worked.) This is better than using X because the only time a large transfer of data needs to go across the network is when you boot or when you load a program. The processing is done on the local PC and only data reads and writes go across the net to a server.
It seems a stupid question to ask because I am sure the answer is 'yes', but can Linux do that too? Does anybody do this currently?
Steve
-- "God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of people that these liberties are a gift of God? Thomas Jefferson - 1781
"Steven T. Hatton" wrote:
Has anybody here tried to boot a PC with a bootPROM, and run linux off the net? This is something we used to do with PCs back when many data entry
http://www.ltsp.org/ http://www.ltsp.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT7115145426.html Cheers j
participants (4)
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Jerry Kreps
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julg@home.com
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Steven T. Hatton
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Togan Muftuoglu