[CentOS] Building an "instant on" X terminal
Robert Heller
heller at deepsoft.com
Wed Apr 14 21:11:12 UTC 2010
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
Deepwoods Software -- Download the Model Railroad System
http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Binaries for Linux and MS-Windows
heller at deepsoft.com -- http://www.deepsoft.com/ModelRailroadSystem/
More information about the CentOS
mailing list