Running X with Gome on diskless nodes

[Trent Bukowsky]

Hello all,

I would like to know if I can run X on diskless nodes over the network.

I have a 3, 486 machines without Hard disks but with network cards. I have a Celeron machine running RH 7.1 as a server. I would specifically like to run Gnome on the nodes which can boot directly of the server. the nodes will mostly be used for Internet Browsing purposes and also to use the staroffice suite.

If anybody can tell me how to do this, and configure the server and nodes or if there is a HOWTO kindly help me out here. I am yet to become a master of Linux and networks, which is one helluva job.....hahaha.

Thankx people,

Trent

[Rafael Serrada Redondo]

hi,

I have found some url's that could interest you :

http://www.comlinux.ufma.br/docs/HOWTO/Diskless-HOWTO.html#ss8.1

http://www.linux.com/howto/Diskless-root-NFS-other-HOWTO.html

http://www.linux.com/howto/Diskless-HOWTO-10.html#ss10.1

Hope this helps,
regards

[Rafael Serrada Redondo]

and the definitive and most complete(I think) :

http://www.ltsp.org/documentation/lts_ig_v2.4/lts_ig_v2.4.html#toc8

regards

[Wodisch]

Hello Trent,

if those systems DO have a CD-ROM drive (and can boot from there) another way would be to use a "DemoLinux" like CD-ROM.
"DemoLinux" (SuSE has something like that, but they call it a "live" CD-ROM) is a comlete Linux installed onto a CD-ROM and running in a RAMdisk and the CD-ROM alone - not harddisk needed or touched (even if there is one).
Since they (the DemoLinux team) describe how to build your own one, you could easily create CD-ROMs for those PCs, including your local setup (like IP-parameters).

See the details there:
www.demolinux.org

HTH,
Wodisc