[H-GEN] Diskless boxes for internet access

[The Fuzzy One]

On Fri, 9 Jan 1998, Steve Pinel wrote:

> This seems to be where I am at the moment.
> 
> 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.

	Netscape doesn't require more than a decent 486.  That's what I'm
using now actually.  It needs quite a bit of memory, and at least 256
colors to run well.

	My personal preference would be for each machine to about about
150 or so meg of hard drive space, with basically only the kernel and X
installed.  It may be a good idea to download a standard setup every time
the machine starts up.

	If you want netscape installed on each indivdual computer, then
they are dumped into X with the most minimal window manager you can find.
They can only save to a floppy disk, because they are logged in as a 
nobody.  You must of course have about 16-32 meg of swap for this.  If
many windows open then netscape will happily gobble most of that.  I use
alot of windows, read as sometimes 50+, and have never gone past 32 meg of
resident netscape for a single copy of 3.x.  4.x may be larger.  I haven't
pulled enough all nighters with it.  Actually it is not quite sane at the
moment anyway, not since my monitor stopped being able to do more than
640x480 resolution.  It keeps telling me there are no sockets for it to
use <laughs>

	/etc/inittab entry:
	x1:2:respawn:/bin/su --command=/usr/bin/X11/startx xuser

	You might even want find a creative way to have a netscape entry
	in inittab, saves them having to run it themselves :)

	/etc/passwd entry:
	xuser:*:50:50:X user:/:/dev/null

	You could give the users more access than this if you'd like, but
for a simple web-browsing setup it's quite easy, reasonably cheap, and
gives students the same thing as they see at home.



	If you run netscape centrally, then you'll be able to get away
without a hard-drive (without swap space) for the X servers (the client
boxen ;).   The central computer will, however need plenty of ram.  Ram is
the bottleneck in netscape.  Anyone remember the specs on cello?  Mostly
swap if I remember, but at least a few hundred meg.  I would personally
suggest at the very least 32, possibly 64 or so real ram, and a quickish
harddrive for an extra couple of hundred meg swap space.

	Comments anyone?

> I know Netscape is greedy, but I really need to provide a common interface
> across the school for internet access, or the less computer literate amongst
> us (most staff and many students), just won't use them.

	It should also support all the relevant censorship things... I
think.  I haven't actually used them myself, but it's an issue you should
consider.

        fuzzy BSc.

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                     <http://student.uq.edu.au/~s335810>
                     <mailto:s335810 at student.uq.edu.au>



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