Re: Setting up a minimal "Xterminal" package

[Rasjid Wilcox <rasjidw at openminddev dot net>]

On Wed, 21 Aug 2002 3:24 am, Bernie Cosell wrote:
> As part of a guerilla effort to get the college I teach at to be more
> Linux- accepting, I'd like to put together as small and simple a package as
> possible that I can drop onto a Windows box that'll turn it into an
> Xterminal running Gnome off of a nearby RedHat box.  Is there some howto or
> other docs/messages that describe how to do this ?   I figure all I need is
> XWin.exe and enough DLLs to make it happy [and probably some setup/config
> files], but I don't know enough about the intricacies of the distro to know
> if that's even correct, much less how to extract that subset and install
> *just*that*much* by itself, and I know I'm in WAY over my head on this...
>
> my goal here is to repackage *JUST* the pieces I'll need in a
> self-contained, self-installing zip archive, so that the students will be
> just "one click" away from being able to connect to the Unix server and run
> GNOME off of it [and they'll have to do it every day, because the
> PC-lab-police wipe the HD and reimage the HD every night!  UGH!! Hence it
> needs to be fairly easy, uncomplicated, etc]

A quick search of the archives on the word 'minimal' would have given results.

In particular, have a look at http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-xfree/2002-06/, 
posts from 14-16 June.

What you are after has been done by several people, including myself.  My 
initial version in fact required nothing to be installed on the Windows 
machines.  The whole thing can be run from a Samba share on the linux box, 
and the Windows users just click on a shortcut in that share (or copy it to 
their desktop etc).

See http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-xfree/2002-06/msg00237.html for further 
details.  I also have a fairly comprehensive set of instructions for enabling 
XDMCP on RedHat 7.3.  I can send you these if you like, although I'm assuming 
you have got that sorted out already.

I hope you are aware that XDMCP sessions are very insecure, which may or may 
not be acceptable in the environement you are proposing.  If you want support 
for encrypted sessions via ssh, then it all gets more complicated, and you 
will either need to do a lot of learning yourself, or you could offer to help 
with an existing (sub)project (or both!).

Rasjid.