[K12OSN] Allowing thin clients to connect to other hosts

[Peter Scheie]

Assuming the users' IDs are stored on the K12Linux server, I would setup public 
key authentication from the K12Linux server to the other Linux boxes--that is, 
copy each user's public SSH key to each desired Linux server--and then put icons 
on user's desktops that call something like 'ssh linuxbox1 application'.  This 
means the application will run on linuxbox1 but display on the thin client.  To 
the user, it's all transparent.  The city of Largo, Florida has been using this 
approach, dedicating a server to each application, with great success.

Peter

Marcio Teixeira wrote:
>  
> 
> Hello,
> 
>  
> 
> I am considering deploying thin clients in a corporate environment and I 
> decided to evaluate K12Linux as a starting point. I am very impressed 
> with what it does with regard to PXE booting thin clients, however I do 
> have a few questions about how the thin clients can be customized.
> 
>  
> 
> The default use case for K12Linux is that the thin clients allow users 
> to log in to the K12Linux server itself and run apps from there. 
> However, we have a situation where we already have other Linux boxes and 
> Windows machines we would want the thin clients to access. I would 
> envision it as being the case that once the thin client booted up, it 
> would present the user with a list of Linux machines to connect to using 
> XDMCP, or Windows machines to connect to using Remote Desktop or VNC. 
> Users would not actually run software on the K12Linux server after boot-up.
> 
>  
> 
> So, my questions are 1) what would it take to customize K12Linux to 
> operate in this manner, 2) would I be better starting with a base FC 10 
> install and attempting to configure LTSP myself on it from scratch, Or 
> 3) are there other LTSP distributions which might be better suited for 
> this purpose?
> 
>  
> 
> If there aren’t any easy answers to this question, any reference, 
> documentation or howto’s on how to customize/configure the boot image 
> which K12Linux sends to the PXE clients would be appreciated! Thanks!
> 
>  
> 
> -- Marcio
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> K12OSN mailing list
> K12OSN at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn
> For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>