[Gllug] Thin client Linux

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 03:29:29PM +0100, James Courtier-Dutton wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I need a Linux distro that can boot off a 1Gig Flash disk. I.e. It is
> a Thin Client with X. It just does "ssh -Y" and starts the remote
> program displaying on the Thin client X display. Network bandwidth is
> not a problem so I don't need NX or anything like that.
> I need to be able to install my own packages on the flash disk. It is
> a program of my own making that handles a proprietary serial protocol
> and forwards data over a tcp session to a remote machine. The program
> is fairly simple, but does some frame checking on the received serial
> data and only sends valid frames over TCP.
> So, a Live CD is no good, because it will forget my installed package
> on the next reboot.
> Also, I must be able to package up my program so there must be a
> development environment with the correct lib versions as the thin
> client.
> 
> I cannot use ubuntu because it is too large.
> What do people suggest?

Make a minimal Debian on the flash disk.

Take the flash disk and attach it to an existing Debian machine.
Create /boot, root and swap (if necessary) filesystems by hand, and
mount the root and boot in a subdirectory on the main Debian machine.
Then run 'debootstrap' to populate it.  Then run 'grub' to create a
bootloader on the flash disk.

There are a bunch of tutorials out there for doing this, but it's
pretty much as I describe above.  This was the specific one I
followed, but there are others you can look at too:

http://peter.molnar.cc/2008/04/11/installing-debian-gnulinux-on-a-alix-board/

I made a ~ 500 MB minimal(-ish) Debian install for my Alix.  It didn't
have X, but that shouldn't add too much if you stick to just the X
server.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones
Red Hat
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