Re: OT: Read-Only NFS-mounted Debian System for Library Kiosk PCs, using KACE K2000 as PXE?
On Tue, 6 Dec 2016 08:01:26 -0600
Kent West <westk@acu.edu> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 6, 2016 at 1:45 AM, emetib <chadbrabec@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > kent,
> >
> > i just looked up quest k2000 and there is no mention of linux at all.
> >
> > are you looking at changing the whole system and putting linux on it?
> > trying to have microsoft give a tftp linux image?
> >
> >
>
> The K2000 is a "System Deployment Appliance", originally developed by a
> company named KACE, bought by Dell, and recently sold to Quest.
>
> It's basically for building/scripting and distributing computer images.
> For example, you buy 100 new Dell computers for your company. You have a
> standard Windows 10 image you've built, that has MS-Office and Firefox
> and Chrome and Adobe Creative Cloud and company-emblazoned screen
> savers, etc. You tell the K2000 to push this image to your 100 new
> Dells and rename them and add them to the domain, and you're done.
>
> You can do the same for your new Macs, putting test lab images on the 10
> Macs headed to the testing lab, developer-friendly images for the 6
> coders, presentation-friendly images for the 4 classroom-podium Macs,
> and the Solitaire-only image for the CEO's MacBook. Push a button; BAM!
> The Macs are imaged and ready to be delivered.
>
> The K2000 has a PXE boot system built in, so that we can configure our
> campus-wide DHCP server to feed the K2000's IP address to client
> computers that are booted to the network; the K2000 then feeds a PXE
> image of some sort to the client PC/Mac, which is typically a
> stripped-down Windows BartPE-type image or a slim Mac OS X image, that
> gives just enough functionality over the network to then run hardware
> diags or disk partitioners or the imaging process.
>
> It's my understanding that the K2000, although not natively supporting
> other OSes, can be made to boot pretty much any system image. But it
> takes tinkering, and although I didn't expect there to be many
> tinkerers in the world that had the tinkering skill-set to work with
> both Debian NFS/remote booting and the K2000, I thought if any place
> would have the expertise it would be debian-user.
>
> Just as a quick recap: I'm looking to have the K2000 offer a Debian
> NFS/remote X session to Dell PCs when they netboot, so that I can
> configure some library diskless read-only kiosks allowing library
> patrons to run a web browser, maybe open a document editor, and print.
> I could accomplish the Debian kiosk setup by installing on the local
> drive, but then I'll have multiple machines to maintain, whereas a
> netboot remote-NFS setup would be a configure-once-configure-everywhere
> situation, and would remove the necessity of having and imaging the the
> local drives.
>
> It's okay that no one here knows how; I knew it was a long shot, but
> thought I'd ask.
>
> Thanks!
>
I recommend you try the linuxquestions.org folks.
If you ever get it working consider contributing how you did it. Perhaps
at the linux documentation project (ldp).
Sincerely,
David
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