[CentOS] Building an "instant on" X terminal

Thu Apr 15 01:12:50 UTC 2010
Stephen Harris <lists at spuddy.org>

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!

-- 

rgds
Stephen