[K12OSN] does my client machine have to be linux/windows?

[Sudev Barar]

On Mon, 2004-08-23 at 17:12, Debbie Schiel wrote:
> My aim is to switch our school (and maybe one day the entire state!) to 
> Linux & OSS.
Good to have you on bandwagon.

> Have recently installed K12LTSP on one machine with two ethernet cards, one 
> connected to the net and the other to a switch. I have one other old windows 
> machine connected to the switch (as a trial/demo) and now I'm stuck. I'm not 
> finding it all as easy as it says on www.k12ltsp.org ("up in 20 minutes").
Well 20 minutes is possible but 30 minutes would be more
reasonable...<grin>

> Q - does my client machine have to be linux/windows?
Client machine has to be "nothing"!! Just any PC with a floppy drive and
ethernet card would make an excellent client. Even if you have win
loaded on the client does not matter as most of the clients boot off the
floppy first. Many new PC do not even need a floppy as you can tweak
their BIOS settings to boot of the network. Make floppy as instructed at
www.rom-o-matic.org for your ethernet card. 


> Q - where on the desktop/ redhat 'start' menu do I find rdesktop?
In the normal install you will not find rdesktop. This is needed when you want another machine to connect to another machine running terminal services.
Not needed if you are booting off a floppy or net-booting

> Oh, and I only installed the second network card after I installed K12ltsp 
> onto the server machine - would the easiest thing be to re-install k12ltsp 
> so that it can configure everything automatically?
I would reckon so. First make a server with only one NIC card.
When you come to the network part of install give the first card IP
192.168.0.254/255.255.255.0 Connect the terminal (or the switch
containing terminal(s) to this first card.
I am giving you this way as mostly there is confusion on which is the
first and the second card and even tough you would have a perfectly fine
system up and running you can be frustrated as the wrong card is being
attached.
Once you have system up and running then use menu "system settings>
network" and point to the eth0 entry. Somewhere in the tabs you would
find an item for binding MAC address to the device. Probe and fix this.
This way when you install the second ethernet card you would not have
any confusion or problems. When to install the second card...after the
system concept is clear and you have a terminal booting.
HTH
-- 
Sudev Barar
Learning Linux