On 9/17/2010 2:07 PM, Scott Robbins wrote:
Oh - and how to install and use freenx/NX for remote access.
hmmmm ... good idea. or i might just add in VNC and carry over thefreenx to an additional course dealing with networking/remote admin/etc. thanks.
I'd guess that for most people starting with linux, freenx with NX running on their existing windows/mac would be a much better fit. Maybe vmwware player or virtualbox too.
And then, you can give them one of the more important Linux lessons. Let them install FreeNX, go to the website and see the completely outdated docmentation. Learning how horrible so much of the documentation is, is probably an important part of being a Linux administrator. FreeNX, fortunately, has a CentOS wiki article, so let them google for it.
Not even being sarcastic here. Lack of good docoumentation is probably one of the biggest challenges facing the Linux user or administrator.
I sort-of agree, but having a working display is the one thing you need most in order to do anything else at all - and doing it via freenx often lets you park your session on a fast remote server instead of the slow inherited desktop you are likely to use for experimentation otherwise, so I'd make an exception and do some handholding here. It's in epel now so I'd get it from there via yum instead of the centos-testing version. And then you can ssh in to the server with putty or whatever client you like to cat /etc/nxserver/client.id_dsa.key. Copy/paste that into the key dialog in your local NX config, save it and you are ready to go faster than you can find the first page of incorrect details with google. And if you have more than one person doing it, they can share the same box with user level logins and learn to coordinate their root changes.