Linux Two Part question: Terminal Server - TS on Boot CD

Anyone have any experience with using Linux based terminal services? As a side project for work I wanted to do a bit of dickory with it to see if it would be benefical in some applications.

Second question, would it be possible to do a custom bootable CD build that would have all the terminal whatnots preloaded so it could be tested on normally windows pcs?

I invariably wait for Glider's comments.

 

Have a look at the linux terminal server project (LTSP) its provided in the respositories for Ubuntu and took about 15 minutes to set up, I'm not at home so i can't check Debians repos but i would think it will be in there. As for the live CD you may want to look at Edubuntu since it was through this that the LTSP integration came about in ubuntu, either that or you will have to roll your own. Just to clarify you want the live CD for the server? The clients don't need any hardware except a decent NIC which can cope with pxe (?).

 

The live cd will be for the clients, if that's even needed. I would like that the clients that have XP installed, can be booted into LTSP without the risk of losing data, which was my reason for have a client live cd.

 

Cool, the clients don't need any thing but a PXE enabled NIC, for the sake of your sanity unplug the HD so it doesn't start booting into windows every time while your configuring. If its a relatively modern motherboard there will be the option of LAN from the boot device menu. If its an Intel or 3Com NIC then an option will flash up just after the post finishes and before the machine starts booting and set the LAN boot from there. [edit] even if its an old motherboard set it to boot from lan and the NIC will do the work. All the hard work is done by the server from there. It basicly goes some thing like this,

Fire up computer > Computer looks for boot device this is set as lan > Boot device looks for PXE enabled server > LTSP server says here is your ip address and this is where you'll get your OS from > OS boots as normal but most of the work is done on the server etc...


Have a look here Its slightly out of date but will get you started.

 

If I understand correctly, you just want clients to boot from a server. Like steveo_mcg allready said, just set up a LTSP server (a word of warning tough, a fast LAN is a MUST, and quite a decent server) and set the clients to boot from LAN. NFS and tFTP will do the rest.

If you make a change to the image on the LTSP server all clients will recieve the new version upon the next reboot.

The Wiki and the Homepage gives a lot of information. Of course Gentoo offers a guide (which mostly can be followed on other distro's too) It also offers a pointer to a bootable floppy for those "non-PXE" motherboards.