[ubuntu-za] Thin Client on Ubuntu 8.04

[Barry Wyatt]

Hey Jonathan,

Thanks for getting back to me, thought I had got lost among all the
"Re-installing Feisty" stuff.

The big question - what version of Ubuntu were you running in your thin
client application?

I am a total beginner at Linux/Ubuntu and am beginning to think the Thin
Client project was a little ambitious to start with.

One of my machines is a 6x86L-PR200+  150 MHz  65536K memory   
Bios 1984-96
(Way older than five years :-)

It runs Kernel 2.6.15-51-386 fine (whatever that is) - no GUI.

Hope this makes sense to you.

Seeing that the machines are older than five years is there another
solution to get these to run a reasonable version of Edubuntu?  This is
the kind of machine that is "freely" available.  If I could buy multiple
units of modern hardware I would not have to go thin client.

Regards
Barry








On Thu, 2008-09-18 at 17:03 +0200, Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) wrote:
> Hi Barry
> 
> Barry Wyatt wrote:
> > Anyone had any luck installing old pcs as thin clients?
> 
> I would say that I've had success with them before, yes.
> 
> > I am still struggling to get thin client working on Hardy.  The server
> > works, I can PXE in with my Laptop - no problems, works well.
> > 
> > I am now trying to etherboot three old PCs (the reason I want to go thin
> > client) - downloads kernel, but after RESET I get a kernel panic.
> 
> If you get to a stage where you're getting a kernel, then it doesn't 
> sound like it's an Etherboot problem, at least.
> 
> > I tried installing Hardy on the actual machines from live CD and the
> > installation hung - are the machines just too old to run Hardy?  Surely
> > not.
> > 
> > I keep reading useful threads to find out they are for an older version
> > of Ubuntu and don't have the correct paths etc.  
> 
> How old are these machines? Machines with very low amounts of RAM (less 
> than 32MB) or very old CPU's (more than 5 years old) aren't really 
> appropriate for LTSP thin clients anymore. There's a slight chance that 
> there might be some hardware incompatibility that causes it. What kind 
> of machine/model is it?
> 
> -Jonathan
> 
>