[CentOS] Building an "instant on" X terminal

[Robert Heller]

At Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:38:20 -0400 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:

> 
> I got my hands on a HP t5720.  This was designed as a thin-client
> workstation (originally Windows XPembedded, talking to a Windows terminal
> server).  It's not very powerful, with an AMD Geode NX 1500 (1.0 GHz),
> 256Mb RAM (16MB used for video) and a 512Mb flash "hard disk".
> 
> I plugged in a USB DVD drive and was able to boot "linux rescue" from
> a C5.4 32bit disk, and it basically looks like pretty generic PC hardware.
> 
> So I thought this would be a great device to build as an "instant on"
> type device.  Well, as close to instant-on as possible :-)  This probably
> means a standard C5 build is not suitable (too many processes running;
> would take a while to start up).  So an "X terminal", maybe.
> 
> I look at the LTSP code base, but this looks like it wants to run as it's
> own OS; I already have a C5 server in my house, I don't want to build
> another one (not even as a virtual image).
> 
> Acting as an X terminal, I'd guess the 256Mb RAM should be sufficient;
> it won't be processing much beyond the display locally (although I might
> want to enable ssh and add a locally connected printer).  The root disk
> could be local (512Mb flash) or by NFS.
> 
> What do people recommend for building this?  What would have the quickest
> power-on-to-ready time? 

You will *probably* find LTSP's performance disapointing, depending on
how beefy your server box is (and what else it is doing) and/or how
many of these little boxes you plan to use.

See 

http://www.deepsoft.com/2009/08/setting-up-thin-clients-at-the-wendell-free-library-part-1/

for a detailed look at what I set up at the Wendell Free Library.  The
machines come up pretty fast.


-- 
Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933
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