Citrix Diskless Workstations?

sprprsnmn · n00b Joined: 15 Jan 2003 Posts: 14

Here's an interesting quandry:

At the library where I work, we have a network of clients that connect to 3 main Citrix servers that run terminal services over IPX. I made the suggestion to my boss that we should switch to TCP/IP. The problem is this: I just learned that all the machines are DOS 6.22 boxes that load the ICA client. I know that there is a client for Linux, so how would I go about setting these machines up to boot directly into the ICA client. Here's what I think needs to happen:

1.)install linux on the machines
2.)install X on the machines without any display manager (these machines are really puny, so any window manager would probably bork them. We're talking pentium 133s)
3.)install the Citrix ICA client on the machines

I want the machines to be able to boot directly into X and have it load immediately without authentication. If some "scary" Linux Xdm comes up, the higher ups with have an anurism, I'm sure. Is there a way to have a default user log into X, and then have an X app load directly? Any help would be excellent.

They don't have to be diskless as the topic implies, but if they could all load the necessary info from an NFS share, that would be cool. If they have to be "thinish" clients, I can handle that.

agentx · n00b Joined: 04 Mar 2003 Posts: 1

I looked into this for my LAN, we run Citrix but in a limited sense only 50 users.
One project worth looking into is PXES. They have a setup that can do X, Citrix, and Windows Terminal Services. You just pick what you want.

It seems pretty dependant on getting PXE booting going from the client.
I got reasonably far with testing but maintaining old hardware compared to purchasing cheap Wyse Wyse Citrix client just wasn't worth my time.
The life span of these kinds of things far exceeds that of PC's and they take up so much less room.
They come with keyboard and mouse. Just use the existing screen.

I'm sure you can find some way of remote booting linux, NFS mounting to get X and the Citrix client.
Look also at http://rom-o-matic.net and http://www.ltsp.org

Anyway my NZ$0.02 worth.