At this point, you will need to restart a few services. On most systems, you can do this by using these commands: # /etc/rc.d/init.d/portmap restart
# /etc/rc.d/init.d/nfs restart
# /etc/rc.d/init.d/dhcpd restart
# /etc/rc.d/init.d/xinetd restart This will restart (or start) the portmap, NFS, dhcpd, and xinetd daemons with the new configurations. If you're using the older inetd, restart it instead of xinetd. To make all this transparent, make sure that these services will start at bootup. That can be a simple matter of adding the above commands into the /etc/rc.d/rc.local file. If the server is already at runlevel 5 (graphical login), you should be able to start the client systems from the boot floppy. If not, you will need to start in runlevel 5 by rebooting the server or executing the telinit 5 command at the server's command prompt. This will restart the system into runlevel 5, for the graphical login. You may be satisfied with whichever display manager your Linux distribution uses by default (on Mandrake Linux, for example, it's KDM, the KDE display manager), but you can switch to a different display manager. This is somewhat system dependant, but on Mandrake Linux you can modify the /etc/sysconfig/desktop file and set the DISPLAYMANAGER equal to gdm (DISPLAYMANAGER=gdm). Check your documentation
Refer to your distribution's documentation on how to change the display manager if you don't want to use the default. At this point, head on over to the client system, insert your boot floppy, and boot from it. The system will use tFTP to obtain the kernel to boot from and will then use dhclient to obtain an IP address and other network information. Finally, once it has an IP address and knows a little something about the network, the system will mount the root filesystem via NFS and connect to the display manager you're running. You should find yourself quickly at a graphical login, just as you would if the system were running locally. Key benefits
During this entire process, the only hardware used on the client system will be the CPU, memory, and the floppy drive, and you'll find the bootup and the Desktop significantly faster than on a traditional Linux workstation. Applications are run on the LTSP server, so no overhead is incurred on the client system. This also means that a lack of powerful hardware will not hamper the speed with which your applications run. By deploying LTSP, you can use old 486 or Pentium systems as your end-user machines. The systems can be stripped so that they don't contain any hard drives, reducing the cost of those systems. (Remember, all that is required is a floppy drive.) Maintenance costs will also be reduced. Instead of maintaining each client system, you need to maintain only the LTSP server. This can save a lot of time maintaining and configuring each system. Provided you kept copies of the boot ROM images available, the most maintenance you might have to perform on these systems will be isolated to hardware -- and perhaps regenerating the odd boot floppy.
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Talkback
Good article, however the Listing A & B links are dead links. Can you provide me with those link locations.
Thanks,
Ken Campbell
Hi,
This rings so true when you look at what LinuxIT did for Baylis Logistics for example. There is a formidable case study on the net and the Linux company (www.linuxit.com) have even been nominated for awards reference the solution, against HP and IBM for example!