[K12OSN] Project MueKow

[Les Mikesell]

On Wed, 2005-03-02 at 11:59, Jim McQuillan wrote:
> The 'Stateless Linux' thing from Fedora is nothing more than an 'Idea'
> at this point. There's nobody booting a thin (or fat) client from it
> yet.

In that case the knoppix version might be a better model. It's fat
client has worked for a year or two and you get the same thing
whether you boot the CD or PXE boot from a running copy.  It lacks
configurability and the ability to automatically start as a thin
client but is great otherwise great.

> Havoc's comment was:  We think that about 50% of all desktops out there
> are really laptop computers, and we are working on a way to keep them
> "stateless" so that if you lose a laptop, you can easily replace it.
> 
> I'm sorry, but that's just not what my experience in the desktop world
> is telling me.

He could be right about current sales, but not if you include inventory
still running from past years.  Doing a 2-way sync on machines that
run disconnected is enormously more complicated than just making
a working OS available and mounting a home directory over the network.
Besides, a kickstart install and restore of your home directory from
a backup should be all it takes to replace a laptop if all the
programs are in an RPM repository.

I'd consider the following options first:
 Thin client, network boot
 Fat client, network boot, running diskless or only local swap
 CD boot into above configurations - better for PCMCIA, etc.
 CD boot with knoppix-like setup of system files but using network
    authentication and home dir mount. (Good for testing and oddball
    architectures you don't want to support with a network image).
The latter 3 set up the infrastructure needed for local apps even if
you start up in thin client mode.

Then possibly - rsync system files onto a local partition as part of
the boot process or on demand - but I'm not sure that even matters. The
older PCs you are likely to have as clients will have slower access on
their own drives than an NFS mount from a good server.

The hard part of making the fat clients/local apps work is setting up
network authentication and automounting home dirs so everyone sees
the same files with the same permissions.  The key to making it usable
is getting packaged LDAP server and client configs included in the
base distributions or at least as a simple add-on.  The rest of the
setup should be kept as simple as possible until that part works.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   les at futuresource.com