boot HDD into RDP client

[Star]

On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 1:09 PM, Pam McLeod <pmcleod at alton.k12.nh.us> wrote:
> I'm with a K-12 school district in the Lakes Region and am looking for an independent consultant who might be able to spend a few hours converting an old PC into a thin client.  Glen Page referred me to this group.
>
> I would prefer a small, thin distro which will boot right up into an RDP client - that's really all I want it to do.  I've been playing with Thinstation for awhile, which seemed perfect for my needs, but can't get it working on these PCs (Compaq Deskpro EX 933 w/ 128MB RAM).  The machines are pre-PXE.  This is taking too much time away from the rest of my projects.
>
> I'm not particularly attached to Thinstation if you've something else which does exactly the same thing.
>
> Please get in touch if you're interested in this project and I'll give you more details.
>

At this time, I'm not looking for any contract work in that area, but
thought I'd point out some ideas:

There are a couple of different attempts that I have made to do
something very much like this.  Two of them have worked out well for
me for "quick" answers.

1)  A basic Gnome-Desktop install of <Favorite Distro Here>.  Then you
can setup a generic, unprivileged user.  Setup GDM to automatically
login using that user.  Gnome Session Manager can be used to
automatically startup "rdesktop" with your requred flags and in
full-screen mode if required.

2)  A bare-bones installation of linux (any distro) that uses getty or
mgetty to automatically login a user.  Then, using the xsession method
to automatically fire up rdesktop without the need to start a window
manager.  This one is obviously much lighter weight, but has some more
time involved in setting it up.

If you'd like me to elaborate on these, or provide some example of my
config changes, I'll be happy to send them along.