[H-GEN] Diskless boxes for internet access

[Robert Brockway]

On Fri, 9 Jan 1998, Steve Pinel wrote:

> Caldera OpenDOS is free to educational institutions, so I run OpenDOS on the
> workstations (loaded off the Netware server on bootup), and run an X-server
> on each of the workstations, making them X-terms.  I configure a dedicated
> Linux server to run Netscape for each of the (four or so) X-terms, specs for
> the X-Client (grunty server) should be P-100 or higher, with 64Mb RAM.

P5-100 would probably be mostly wasted imho.  zen is a 486DX-33 (with 
32mb ram) which has an Xterminal hanging off it plus lots of backend
services.  I am a power user, and really push this box.  It does just
fine.  Ram is the primary problem, and 64 would be good for the server.
But cpu power is only a secondary issue - get a high end 486 perhaps for
plenty of grunt. Unfortunately people see windows running on a 486 and
forget it actually is a powerful box.  In the good ol' days (the year
before last) a 486 equivalent machine (dingo.uq.edu.au) handled 100 or
more symultaneous users before it started to slow noticably - they were
all telnetting in and not doing compiles but I think it goes to show what
a machine can do with enough ram.  If you can get a P5-100 for a good
price go for it - you might need the extra power one day, but my point is
that it isn't a top priority.

Also look into adding a squid proxy to improve web and ftp access times.

> Anyone got eny suggestions for a DOS based X-server?

There are a number of commercial ones out there, plus some free ones. I
thought ms-windows (3.1 or higher) was pretty much a necessity for them
though.

If I were you I'd still be looking at Linux for the Xterminals too.

Cheers,
	-Robert

--Robert Brockway B.Sc.  Email: robert at zen.humbug.org.au, robert at icc.net.au
				r.brockway at mailbox.uq.edu.au
                         WWW:   http://www.humbug.org.au/~robert
                         President of HUMBUG (http://www.humbug.org.au)

----------------------- HUMBUG General List --------------------------------
echo "unsubscribe general" | mail majordomo at humbug.org.au # To Unsubscribe