Linux Based Thin Clients - DIY

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In my last post I talked about Thin Clients. This is a Do It Yourself instruction manual to make your thin clients using Linux and basic computer hardware.

You will require the following:

1. A PC with Small Form Factor casing, uATX Motherboard (Onboard - sound/VGA/LAN/USB), Memory(256MB is more than enough), Processor (Any Low end processor is good enough) {with a monitor the total cost should come to less than Rs. 10,000)

2. 1GB Flash Disk Drive (Thumb Drive)

3. Knoppix (you can also use DSL - damm small linux, but is does not have the looks and the extra SW that Knoppix comes with), Syslinux (download the zip version)

Knoppix comes as a ISO image for a CD. You have to extract all the files from the image (Try winrar or ISO buster). Copy all the contents of the CD to your formated flash disk drive. Once you are done copying run the following commands under DOS. Please note that the commands should be run when you are inside the drive. For example if the your flash disk drive is i: then you should run this command under i: in DOS.

copy boot\isolinux *.*
del isolinux.bin
ren isolinux.cfg syslinux.cfg

These commands will basically copy the boot files from /boot directory to the root directory. Delete the isolinux.bin and then rename isolinu.cfg to syslinux.cfg

Once you are done with the above - extract the contents from the ZIP files for syslinux into your hard drive. After extracting the contents, go into DOS mode and and change your current Directory into the directory that you extracted the contents of the ZIP file. There will be a directory called win32 inside that directory, change your current directory to the win32 dir. There is an exe file inside called syslinux.exe. Run the executable file and as parameters give the drive name of the flash disk drive (if your flash disk drive is i: then type: “syslinux.exe i:” and press enter. This should make your flash disk drive bootable.

Now stick in the flash memory into the USB ports of the new PC without Hard Drive. Boot it, go into the BIOS and change the first boot device to USB FDD, save and reboot. Now the PC will boot into Knoppix Linux. The good part is that linux mounts the flash disk as read only, so the end used no will not be able to change any settings and mess it around (Just like the embedded OS inside thin clients.

Knoppix comes bundled with applications like Openoffice and Gimp and also Terminal server client, in case you want to configure it to run remote desktop over the network.

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