Re: Google sumer of code, need a DD
On 5/5/06, Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com> wrote:
[Mario]
> TCOS is a new method to build an embedded debian based thin client
> operating system. Similar to PXES but using debian kernel and
> binaries.
>
> More info about project:
> http://soleup.eup.uva.es/mediawiki/index.php/TCOS/en
How is this proposal different from the LTSP muekow packages currently
in Debian and Ubuntu?
LTSP starts terminal booting first a minimal system that mount rest of
system by nfs, TCOS is like PXES, because terminal use a bigger init
image and use local apps, with this it's posible to reduce network
bandwich and use _same_ kernel and binaries than debian or ubuntu
distro (no need to patch kernel or special pakages)
Muekow create a debootstrap chroot and serve it with nfs with a lot of
things that terminal don't need. Terminal need only some binaries and
his linked libraries TCOS have only binaries and libs (based on info
of ldd) and some conf files.
Simple muekow could be 300-400 Mb, TCOS uses 5-15 [*] Mb of "extras" binaries
[*] Depends what things we want to support (sound, usb, discover, etc..)
Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
Looking at the specs: 64MB as a minimal requirement still means leaving
behind many clients.
Why is that required? A large ramdisk at runtime? If so: could this be
avoided?
How is http://thinstation.sf.net/ different? They claim to require 16MB
from the client.
Also look at the package lessdisks as a potential model.
We need 64 Mb because initramfs is uncompressed in RAM in rw mode, I
will work in leave in initramfs image only essential files we really
need or examining other initramfs options to mount all in ro mode.
Because of this /usr dir is compressed with squashfs and downloaded
later with tftp (this reduces 10-20 Mb of RAM) and is mounted in rw
mode with unionfs and 2Mb of ramdisk.
Thinstation and PXES use old patched binaries, and for very old
hardware is the best alternative, today a 64 Mb computer is a perfect
candidate to work as terminal, not for workstation. These projects are
not suitable for hacking very much and TCOS is a collection of simple
shell scripts.
I have booted TCOS using 32 Mb but swap usage is very high.
I have examined all thin clients projects and nobody use terminal
harddisk, I know that some people don't like to use local disks, but
in local disk we can copy some things to avoid downloading everytime,
or create swap files or partitions and use it. Old computers usually
have old harddisks.
TCOS have today all network cards kernel modules, I will work to put
in image only the modules we need. (this will reduce RAM requirements
a lot)
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