Nacho-BSD

[Steve Bergman]

Mike Schwartz (PC Support) wrote:
> Yes, I was thinking of using these as thin-clients, so I was wondering
> how the CentOS terminal emulations works to access filePro servers right out
> of the box, or if you were using a different terminal emulator running on
> the CentOS thin clients.
>
>   
Here is the bzip2'd kickstart iso image:

http://68.12.186.87:81/CentOS4.3_ThinClient_Install.iso.bz2



And here are the /appl/fp/termcap entries I use for "linux" and "xterm":

http://68.12.186.87:81/fp_termcap_entries.txt


And here is the kickstart config file in case you want to play around 
with the kickstart image:

http://68.12.186.87:81/ks.cfg



You will also need the iso image for the CentOS 4.3 CD2:

http://mirrors.kernel.org/centos/4.3/isos/i386/CentOS-4.3-i386-bin2of4.iso


It only pulls a couple of things off that CD, but the way the packages 
are arranged, it is still needed.  You don't need any of the other images.

Basically, put it in the CD drive and boot from CD.  Hit enter once at 
the beginning, and it will wipe ***everything*** off the hard drive 
without asking anything further and install itself.

Log in as root and go to the bottom of /etc/inittab after it reboots. 

(Note that it expects to be able to get an address via dhcp.  Note also 
that since it can't find the XDMCP server yet, it may be a few minutes 
before you get a text login screen.  Be patient.)

There will be a line that starts an X server that should look something 
like:

rx:345:respawn:su - root -c "/etc/X11/X -query server_ip_or_dns_name -fp 
tcp/server_ip_or_dns_name:7100" >/var/log/remote_x.err 2>&1

You will want to change server_ip_or_dns_name to the correct value in 
both places.

You must enable XDMCP on the server.  You can do this in  
Applications->System Settings->Login Screen from the server's Gnome 
desktop. (You can edit gdm.conf directly but I usually use the gui for 
this.)

The -fp argument tells it what font server to use.  By default, the 
CentOS server is not going to be making its font service public.  You 
should make the server listen by commenting out

no-listen = tcp

in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fs/config on the server and restart the xfs 
service. ( # service xfs restart )

You could also enable xfs on the thin client by logging in as root and:

# chkconfig xfs on
# service xfs start

and then you could simply remove the "-fp" option in /etc/inittab.

I'm probably leaving some detail out, so if you have difficulty, let me 
know.

I should also say that the links I have given are to my desktop machine 
which is usually on, but is not guaranteed to be available 24/7.

-Steve