[plug] remote terminal

[Craig Ringer]

> I wish to have it similar to an xterm, but as a text terminal. 

OK, I think I get you now.

Try a script that waits for the user to input a username before 
connecting to the server using "ssh -l $USERNAME $SERVER" where those 
vars have been set appropriately already. You can set this script to run 
from inittab on a couple of vts.

> Maybe 
> booting form the network is what I want. Can you send some instructions 
> then craig?
Done but I meant it when i said some assmbly required. And then some more...

That is to say, as I wrote it up I realised just how complex it had 
become and just how unprepared I am to explain how to get everything 
working yet.

Try ltsp (http://www.ltsp.org).

I'm not just BSing here, I do have this working and am now taking what I 
wrote as an explanation for "linuxalien" and turning it into some 
documentation. Once that's done and I've solved the main issues 
remaining (getting NFS mounts to work _really_ early in boot and putting 
in the swap setup bits) I can post it on the web for those interested in 
a manual thin client build (its cool and useful).

If you really, really want to do it, you'll need a server with servers 
for dhcp, tftp, and nfs, a chrootable linux install in a subdirectory on 
your server (see man debootstrap for how on debian), a kernel with 
nfs-boot and kernel-level ip autoconfig enabled + a NIC driver compiled 
in (DO NOT USE for the server - its for the client machine to boot), an 
etherboot boot disk for your client's NIC, the mknbi-linux program from 
the etherboot tools, and a lot of time :-)

I'd say ltsp is your best bet if you don't want to get your hands 
really, really dirty in the guts of the boot process.

BTW for those interested I'll be posting a _very_ preliminary version of 
the docs (more a mini-draft-howto) at 
http://www.postnewspapers.com.au/~craig/ in the next couple of days.

-- 
Craig Ringer
GPG Key Fingerprint: AF1C ABFE 7E64 E9C8 FC27  C16E D3CE CDC0 0E93 380D
	-- if it ain't broke, add features 'till it is. (or:)
	while (! broken) { features ++ ; broken = isBroken(features) }
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