Thinstation 5.5. This video shows how to install Thinstation 5.5.1 and build a Thin Client ISO Image on VMware Workstation/Player step by step. This tutorial is also helpful to installing.
What is DevStation?
DevStation is the name of a pre-configured Linux system primarily used for building ThinStation boot images. DevStation is not required in order to use the ThinStation build system, but it's a nice place to start because it helps establish the work flow for building boot images.
Watch the video.
Watch the video.
Where to get it
You can obtain DevStation by downloading the installer disc ISO image at http://sourceforge.net/projects/thinstation/files/latest/download.
![Thinstation linux Thinstation linux](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aLLd-ATea10/T1WoRIBuL3I/AAAAAAAAMV0/6Npt9FGxCTM/s1600/1.jpg)
Installing DevStation
Allthough it is possible to install the DevStation image onto real hardware, most find it considerably faster to develop on a workstation capable of hosting multiple virtual machines (servers, clients and other network appliances).
Watch the video.
Watch the video.
Specifications for creating a new virtual machine
Option | Value |
---|---|
Type: | Custom |
Compatibility: | Default |
Installer disc: | dowloaded ISO image file (see above) |
Guest OS: | Linux |
Version: | Other Linux 2.6.x kernel 64-bit |
Name: | DevStation |
Location: | Default |
Processors: | 1 (Enable PAE) |
Cores: | 2 |
Memory: | minimal value 2 GiB |
Video Memory: | minimal value 64 MB |
Network Connection: | Bridged |
SCSI Controller: | Default |
Disk: | Default |
Disk Type: | Default |
Maximum disk size: | 20 GB for a shallow single branch checkout. Over 40 GB for deep history and branch comparison. |
Disk File: | Default |
Installation steps
- Power on virtual machine.
- Select “Installer for DevStation” menu option. Syslinux will load a little over 100 MB into memory.
- Read all notes shown after startup. Select OK.
- Select Disk to use for installation. Select OK.
- Select native resolution of the display. Select OK.
- Select your time zone. Select OK.
- Select your locale (language, symbols and keyboard layout). Select OK.
- Confirm all warnings. The installer will download a bootable OS image and several GB via Git.
- Read all notes shown after installation. Select OK, to acknowledge each one. Remove the CD when instructed to do so. Click OK to reboot.
Usage
Booting
Upon rebooting the system should automaticly boot the “Standard” image within a 15 second timeout. A “Backup” image is available in the case that a web update is defective or a local build of the DevStation image does not behave as expected.
Building Your First Image
Click Start › DevStation › Build Image. This will build a default image that is bootable in a virtual machine. The image will include:
- XFWM4 (Window manager)
- Chromium (Web browser)
- NetworkManager (Networking stack)
- Gnome media packages and plugins
- Xorg drivers for most vendors (Not the kernel modules though!)
- FreeRDP (Remote access application)
- Open VM Tools (copy & paste)
- Terminal (shell utility)
- Thunar (file manager)
- Samba (SMB client)
- CUPS (printing system)
- All available time zones
- All available locales
What’s next?
Please read on here.
Introduction
![Thinstation Thinstation](https://a.fsdn.com/con/app/proj/thinstation/screenshots/Multi-Client%20XFCE%20Desktop.jpg)
You have to decide which medium and appropriate boot loader a thin client will use to load the ThinStation boot image (“deployment”). You have three options:
- CD/DVD with ISOLINUX
- Removable media or internal storage devices with SYSLINUX
- Network with PXELINUX
A comparison:
Medium | CD/DVD | removable media | internal storage devices | network |
---|---|---|---|---|
Initial setup effort | very low | low | medium | (very) high |
effort of boot image update | medium | medium | high (low Using-the-hdupdate-package) | low |
massive parallel booting | no problem | no problem | no problem | network bottleneck |
No matter which way you deploy ThinStation you can always fetch configuration files through the network.
Booting from CD
A very easy way to boot ThinStation is from CD or DVD.
Pros and Cons
Pro: little setup required (only BIOS/UEFI); reliable boot process
Con: tedious process of (erasing and) writing an optical medium; does not scale (work well) for lots of thin clients (lots of CDs have to be written)
How to
Set
param bootimages 'iso'
in build.conf
and rebuild ThinStation. Then fetch the ISO image file thinstation.iso
from the subdirectory build/boot-images/iso
of you build environment and write it onto a CD or a DVD using any available CD/DVD writing application. Now put this CD/DVD into the thin client optical drive and boot from it. On the first boot you have to change your BIOS/UEFI settings accordingly.Booting with SYSLINUX
If you plan to boot from either removable media or internal storage devices you will probably be using the same bootloader: SYSLINUX. Although there are other bootloaders available (e.g. GRUB) it is best to start with SYSLINUX because of its simplicity.
Pros and Cons
Pro: little setup required (only BIOS/UEFI); reliable boot process; scales (works) well for lots of thin clients if you have a stable boot image in place
Con: tediuous process of writing the boot image to the drive (USB stick, Compact Flash card, SD card, hard disk) – To avoid this use hdupdate.
How to
- Set
param bootimages 'syslinux'
inbuild.conf
and rebuild ThinStation. - Is your drive physically attached to your development system?
- Yes: From inside the chroot environment identify the drive that you want to be bootable.
fdisk -l |grep -e 'Disk /'
will list all block devices attached to the system (e.g./dev/sdb
).Then runmkmbrdrv -o /build/boot-images/syslinux -p d:0:boot <drive ex. /dev/sdb>
- No: Create a FAT16 or FAT32 type partition on your drive and format it accordingly. Don't forget to set the boot flag. Mount the newly created partition (e.g.
/dev/sdb1
).Then fetch the files from the subdirectorybuild/boot-images/syslinux/boot
of you build environment, copy them onto your mounted partition and unmount it.For a Linux machine now run:syslinux --install /dev/sdb1
where/dev/sdb1
is the device name of your target partition (see above, change if necessary).
- Put your drive (back) in the thin client and boot from it. On the first boot you have to change your BIOS/UEFI settings accordingly.
Booting from network via PXE
The easiest and most common method of booting ThinStation from network is by using PXE. PXE is implemented in virtually every modern networking card (including onboard devices on mainboards). Thus it is very likely that your thin client supports PXE booting.
Although it would be possible to use GRUB or Etherboot for PXE booting, we recommend that you use PXELINUX for two reasons:
- PXELINUX is the most tried and tested way to do it. ThinStation supports it out of the box.
- PXELINUX has a flexible configuration mechanism.
Pros and Cons
Pro: on the client side almost no setup (only BIOS/UEFI) and no storage device is required
Con: in your network a set of services (DHCP, TFTP) is required that is not trivial to set up; does not scale (work well) for lots of thin clients (the delivering server is a bottleneck)
Prerequisites
DHCP
PXE requires you to have a working DHCP service for assigning IP adresses to thin clients. In addition to that you have to configure two so called DHCP options for requesting thin clients:
- To tell a thin client where to boot from you have to set option number 66 to the hostname or the IP adress of the TFTP file server (serving the boot loader).
- Each thin client has to know which file to request as a boot loader from the TFTP server. You have to set option number 67 to the exact file name of the PXE boot loader on the server. This is
pxelinux.0
if you use PXELINUX.
TFTP
You also need to set up a TFTP file service to deliver
- the PXE boot loader file (mandatory),
- the PXE boot loader configuration files (optional but very common),
- the Linux kernel (optional but very common),
- the initial ramdisk (initrd) for system boot up (optional but very common) and
- boot time configuration files for ThinStation thin clients (optional but common).
Numbers 3 and 4 from above can be delivered by HTTP or FTP servers too. This needs special configuration of PXELINUX that is not covered here. See here for a starting point.
All of the above files need to reside in the TFTP server root directory (“TFTP root”) tree that is served to thin clients.
How to
- Set
param bootimages 'pxe'
inbuild.conf
and rebuild ThinStation. - Copy the following files from the subdirectory
build/boot-images/pxe/boot
of you build environment into your TFTP root directory:
vmlinuz
(Linux kernel)initrd
(initial ramdisk)- and all files and subdirectories in the subdirectory
pxelinux
(PXELINUX configuration files).
- Boot your thin client via PXE.
By default all devices booting via PXE will now load your most recent ThinStation boot image. To change that behaviour please rename the file
pxelinux/default
in your TFTP root directory to something more appropriate.