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?
On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 07:50:42PM +0000, Joseph L. Casale wrote:
What do people recommend for building this? What would have the quickest power-on-to-ready time?
Well, you could use thin station, I have used it in the past and its pretty slick...
Hmm... I'll take a look at that.
Thanks!
On 4/14/2010 2:38 PM, Stephen Harris 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).
LTSP doesn't install another OS on the server - it PXE-boots one to client devices with just enough to run X as a thin client. That would probably work for you - or whatever local install you can do that doesn't start X and once it is up, do 'X -query server'.
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?
This probably isn't what you want, but my favorite for quick access is a windows or mac laptop that handles sleep mode gracefully and let it sleep instead of powering off. Then when it wakes up and gets a network connection (in a few seconds), fire up the NX client from www.nomachine.com to connect to a freenx session on your server - which you can disconnect and re-connect as needed with everything on the desktop still running. Some of the more current linux distributions might handle sleep mode but you'd either have to install a local window manager or work to get it to run the nx client in a bare X session.
On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 03:04:26PM -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
On 4/14/2010 2:38 PM, Stephen Harris wrote:
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
LTSP doesn't install another OS on the server - it PXE-boots one to client devices with just enough to run X as a thin client. That would probably work for you - or whatever local install you can do that doesn't start X and once it is up, do 'X -query server'.
My reading of the ltsp pages is that they prefer to distribute it as an OS image, with the ltsp components already integrated and that it's "hard work" to do the integration yourself. http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/ltsp/index.php?title=Ltsp5Status http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/ltsp/index.php?title=IntegratingLtsp
Has this changed?
On Wed, 14 Apr 2010, Stephen Harris wrote:
My reading of the ltsp pages is that they prefer to distribute it as an OS image, with the ltsp components already integrated and that it's "hard work" to do the integration yourself. http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/ltsp/index.php?title=Ltsp5Status http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/ltsp/index.php?title=IntegratingLtsp
It is distribution integration, and as to the PXE image a bit of kernel/library stabilization. Over time has lived from many sources. Laborious and picky, particularly when multiple targets are maintained, but not superhuman to do
-- Russ herrold
On 4/14/2010 3:26 PM, Stephen Harris wrote:
On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 03:04:26PM -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
On 4/14/2010 2:38 PM, Stephen Harris wrote:
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
LTSP doesn't install another OS on the server - it PXE-boots one to client devices with just enough to run X as a thin client. That would probably work for you - or whatever local install you can do that doesn't start X and once it is up, do 'X -query server'.
My reading of the ltsp pages is that they prefer to distribute it as an OS image, with the ltsp components already integrated and that it's "hard work" to do the integration yourself. http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/ltsp/index.php?title=Ltsp5Status http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/ltsp/index.php?title=IntegratingLtsp
Has this changed?
Sort-of... In recent Fedora versions ltsp5 is a packaged rpm. For a Centos base the easiest approach might be to re-install the k12ltsp EL5 distribution which is basically a stock Centos plus ltsp4, plus some other education-related stuff. A few years ago I would have recommended it highly, but it seems on it's way out now. You might be able to pick out the rpms and setup scripts that you'd need to back into an existing distribution but it's probably not worth the trouble for one terminal. More info here: http://k12ltsp.org/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page
Install the image for a t5725 from a USB stick. Very cool.
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DriverDownload.jsp?lang=en&...
On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 04:37:21PM -0400, Reynolds McClatchey wrote:
Install the image for a t5725 from a USB stick. Very cool.
Huh. A small version of Debian Etch. Boots (once POST has complted) in under 25 seconds.
Hmm, old versions of software, and "apt-get upgrade" causes the system to die (root disk filled out) but definitely a possibility.
Thanks!
Stephen Harris wrote:
On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 04:37:21PM -0400, Reynolds McClatchey wrote: Huh. A small version of Debian Etch. Boots (once POST has complted) in under 25 seconds.
Hmm, old versions of software, and "apt-get upgrade" causes the system to die (root disk filled out) but definitely a possibility.
If you aren't adverse to Ubuntu, 10.04 LTS (beta right now but final by the end of the month) boots in 10 seconds from a hard drive. I've tried it: It was impressively fast.
On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 05:26:44PM -0700, Benjamin Franz wrote:
If you aren't adverse to Ubuntu, 10.04 LTS (beta right now but final by the end of the month) boots in 10 seconds from a hard drive. I've tried it: It was impressively fast.
Will it run in 256Mb RAM and on 512Mb of disk? 'Cos that's all this machine has :-)
Stephen Harris wrote:
On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 05:26:44PM -0700, Benjamin Franz wrote:
If you aren't adverse to Ubuntu, 10.04 LTS (beta right now but final by the end of the month) boots in 10 seconds from a hard drive. I've tried it: It was impressively fast.
Will it run in 256Mb RAM and on 512Mb of disk? 'Cos that's all this machine has :-)
I don't know.
9.10 claims that the server version requires 64MB of RAM and 500MB of disk. But that is *without* X installed, so...
On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 8:54 PM, Stephen Harris lists@spuddy.org wrote:
On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 05:26:44PM -0700, Benjamin Franz wrote:
If you aren't adverse to Ubuntu, 10.04 LTS (beta right now but final by the end of the month) boots in 10 seconds from a hard drive. I've tried it: It was impressively fast.
Will it run in 256Mb RAM and on 512Mb of disk? 'Cos that's all this machine has :-)
thinstation will, if tuned to just the essential utils.
I boot and run it completely in a 8MB initrd image off PXE.
-Ross
On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 1:54 AM, Stephen Harris lists@spuddy.org wrote:
If you aren't adverse to Ubuntu, 10.04 LTS (beta right now but final by the end of the month) boots in 10 seconds from a hard drive. I've tried it: It was impressively fast.
Will it run in 256Mb RAM and on 512Mb of disk? 'Cos that's all this machine has :-)
I did a quick and dirty test setup yesterday and was quite impressed. One of the tests was running a VMWare with 128MB and a tiny empty disk. The VM booted off the LTSP binaries merrily and was up and running within seconds. The server was a VM on my file server with 768MB RAM and the client was a VM on my linux laptop so everything did go through the network cable in the end. I've also tried an ancient 700MHz Pentium 3 laptop with 256MB RAM and that was way faster than the local Linux installation on the box so I think this setup is going to stay and will be in use instead of the local OS.
On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 1:26 AM, Benjamin Franz jfranz@freerun.com wrote:
If you aren't adverse to Ubuntu, 10.04 LTS (beta right now but final by the end of the month) boots in 10 seconds from a hard drive. I've tried it: It was impressively fast.
I was curious about this and installed one of these on an amd64 VM with a standard LTSP installation and my ancient 700MHz i386 laptop was running of it within an hour and pretty fast as well. Even sound worked fine and stuff like youtube were tolerable. The performance and experience was way better than the old thin-client terminals of the same age with a cut-down Linux on the on-board CF-Card. The whole thing took 13GB on disk and 768MB of RAM to support two clients. Trying the CentOS one is probably the next step.
Hakan Koseoglu wrote:
On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 1:26 AM, Benjamin Franz jfranz@freerun.com wrote:
If you aren't adverse to Ubuntu, 10.04 LTS (beta right now but final by the end of the month) boots in 10 seconds from a hard drive. I've tried it: It was impressively fast.
I was curious about this and installed one of these on an amd64 VM with a standard LTSP installation and my ancient 700MHz i386 laptop was running of it within an hour and pretty fast as well. Even sound worked fine and stuff like youtube were tolerable. The performance and experience was way better than the old thin-client terminals of the same age with a cut-down Linux on the on-board CF-Card. The whole thing took 13GB on disk and 768MB of RAM to support two clients. Trying the CentOS one is probably the next step.
There are substantial differences in the way LTSP4 and LTSP5 work. You might want to try both if you haven't yet. The k12ltspEL5 distro would have LTSP4.
Stephen Harris wrote:
On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 04:37:21PM -0400, Reynolds McClatchey wrote:
Install the image for a t5725 from a USB stick. Very cool.
Huh. A small version of Debian Etch. Boots (once POST has complted) in under 25 seconds.
Hmm, old versions of software, and "apt-get upgrade" causes the system to die (root disk filled out) but definitely a possibility.
If it gets you to a point where you can 'X -query server', the software versions probably don't matter much. You really run everything from the server anyway.
I thought there used to be several projects to boot into a thin client. Thinstation, tcos, pxes, etc. but I haven't followed them since starting to use NX/freenx.
On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 07:41:40PM -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
Stephen Harris wrote:
On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 04:37:21PM -0400, Reynolds McClatchey wrote:
Install the image for a t5725 from a USB stick. Very cool.
Huh. A small version of Debian Etch. Boots (once POST has complted) in under 25 seconds.
Hmm, old versions of software, and "apt-get upgrade" causes the system to die (root disk filled out) but definitely a possibility.
If it gets you to a point where you can 'X -query server', the software versions probably don't matter much. You really run everything from the server anyway.
The "out of the box" build for the HP software does local display, which has it's benefits, primary being that I've never configured XDM on my server... indeed it doesn't even start any XDM server 'cos it boots into runlevel 3 :-) I might look into it, though, as part of my experiments.
One downside... I think I managed to corrupt the OS disk by doing a hard powerdown. so I'm reflashing it again. I do need the system to be more stable and handle unclean shutdowns; a netbooted system handles this nicely.
I thought there used to be several projects to boot into a thin client. Thinstation, tcos, pxes, etc. but I haven't followed them since starting to use NX/freenx.
Based off another post, I'm also playing with thinstation. This works (netboot took 54 seconds) but currently appears to be stuck at 800x600 resolution. The display should be able to do 1280x1024x32 but trying to force that causes it to die. Hmmph :-( More playing needed!
Huh. A small version of Debian Etch. Boots (once POST has complted) in under 25 seconds.
Hmm, old versions of software, and "apt-get upgrade" causes the system to die (root disk filled out) but definitely a possibility.
I believe Synaptic is installed. I did not upgrade but used Synaptic to install the packages I needed but not included - lpd, xpdf. I found an Etch repo somewhere.
I ran out of flash at some point. I needed serial printers for a plant label printer and could never get the RS232 printer working.
We have 10 or so HP thin clients and fragility of the flash data has not been an issue. Instant on is not an issue and I missed that in your original note.
Good Luck.
At Wed, 14 Apr 2010 15:38:20 -0400 CentOS mailing list centos@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-...
for a detailed look at what I set up at the Wendell Free Library. The machines come up pretty fast.
On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 05:11:12PM -0400, Robert Heller wrote:
I got my hands on a HP t5720. This was designed as a thin-client
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.
The server is a Q6600 which is mostly idle; I hope it's fast enough :-)
http://www.deepsoft.com/2009/08/setting-up-thin-clients-at-the-wendell-free-...
Interesting. Thanks!
Stephen Harris wrote:
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.
check out DSL, Damn Small Linux. entire system fits on a 50MB flash or credit card sized miniCD. runs X and everything. uses busybox and uClinux userspace utils, TWMN is the window manager, it should be able to run as an X terminal, rdesktop, etc.
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Benjamin Franz -
Hakan Koseoglu -
John R Pierce -
Joseph L. Casale -
Les Mikesell -
R P Herrold -
Reynolds McClatchey -
Reynolds McClatchey -
Robert Heller -
Ross Walker -
Stephen Harris