Newbie Question

[30362]

I am looking for a stripped-down distribution of Linux that can fit on a boot floppy that I can also integrate the Citrix ICA client into and still maintain a single boot-floopy. Does anyone have experience with this?

Thanks.

 

[clonny2]

Look at the LRP

Linux Router Project

I believe that is the name. You can fit whole distro on a single floppy.

 

[30362]

I have browsed LRP briefly, do you have any experience with the Citrix ICA client and it's footprint size? Or am I out of luck with regards to a single-floppy...

 

[clonny2]

sorry, sure don't. Is there a linux citrix client. I can't remember.

 

[wmg]

Yes there is a Linux ICA client - works really well too but I don't think you'll fit it on a floppy. Maybe a bootable CD? Even one of those little tiny CD's should fit it all. We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true. [Robert Wilensky, 1997]

 

[clonny2]

You might be able to try using a pxe boot.

pxe is network boot.

 

[30362]

All great suggestions! The systems don't have CD-Roms so a boot floppy was my first thought, I assume with PXE boot I need a NIC with an eprom or can I do so from floppy too?

 

[krale]

>I assume with PXE boot I need a NIC with an eprom or can I do so from floppy too?

Not always. Many motherboards are smart enough to know if there's no bootable media on the computer, the bios broadcasts BOOTP requests. A DHCP server can do BOOTP stuff, as long as you can send images whenever it 'asks'. Here's an example from my dhcpd.conf for a managed hub. The server is DHCPD by the Internet Software Consortium (the people who make BIND, DHCP and others)

_______

host routebox {
hardware ethernet 00:20:af:49:15:49 ;
fixed-address 192.168.0.201 ;
filename "/boot/manage.img";
}

The idea is , you put in your DHCP server a list of MAC addresses and when the bios requests to boot, you shove a X meg bootfile to it. Tailor the scripts on it to boot into Citrix client and other tools at startup.

This all hinges on whether these devices are smart enough to look at the network if there's no medium in the computer...

Good luck. Please let Tek-Tips members know if their posts were helpful.