I am using my laptop with ltsp because it is basically silent without the drive spinning. I just used lilo to do the inital boot instead of floppy or boot rom on the nic, then spin the drive down once the system is up.
My laptop nic is an intel etherexpresspro100 (eepro100 driver) chip on the motherboard, not a PCMCIA card. I assume though, that if you build your own kernel including both PCMCIA support and the specific nic in your card, that the lilo boot will still work right? I've attached the beginnings of my draft mini-howto on it in case it's useful. -emile On Wed, 10 Oct 2001, Chris wrote: > Soulds like a good idea, my next challenge is to test out a laptop on LTSP > > problem is there are no boot roms for my PCMCIA card so what you need to do > is build a kernel with PCMCIA and the modules for your NIC and place them in > the modules dir , you then need a small floppy distro of linux to boot the > clients from so they can mount the NFS and boot LTSP > > Im not 100 % sure of the details but I am going to give mine a shot and > maybe add a contrib of how to do this > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Alan C" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2001 3:50 PM > Subject: [Ltsp-discuss] ltsp hardware > > > > > > Is anyone compiling a list of good hardware for ltsp? > > Specifically PCI and PCMCIA network cards, and flash disks for > non-bootable cards. > > Some posts to Ltsp-discuss suggest that some kit is a bit iffy, and there > has been some negative press about linux and tulip cards. > > I plan to use a notebooks as terminals, and Debian on the server. > > I'm just starting off so I'd like to cut my teeth on something that's > known to work. > > Thanks > > Alan > > > > > > > > Make a difference, help support the relief efforts in the U.S. > > http://clubs.lycos.com/live/events/september11.asp > > > > _____________________________________________________________________ > > Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss > > For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.openprojects.net > > > _____________________________________________________________________ > Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss > For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.openprojects.net >
<html> <head><title>Silent Laptop LTSP client Mini-HOWTO</title></head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff"> <h1>Silent Laptop LTSP client Mini-HOWTO</h1> <h2>or: <i>LTSP + laptop = Silent computing bliss</i></h2> <p>© 2000 Emile Snyder < <a href="mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]";>[EMAIL PROTECTED]</a>> <p>Published under the GFDL <hr> <p><a href="http://www.ltsp.org/";>LTSP</a> - The homepage of the Linux Terminal Server Project <h1>When do you need this document?</h1> <p>This document is intended to help you figure out how to turn a machine with no floppy or netboot capable machine into a LTSP client, while getting the client hard drive spun down after booting. I wanted to do this to use my laptop as a silent X terminal. <p>I have an ultralight laptop (ARM N20U, from the now defunct TuxTops people as an Ametheyst 20U, also branded as a ChemBook 2020, and some other things) It doesn't have a built in floppy or CD, and has an onboard Intel EtherExpress Pro/100 NIC which (as far as I know) doesn't have anywhere to put a boot PROM. It also runs essentially silently when the disk is spun down. I was sick of messing with various hacks to get the disk spun down more of the time, and wanted totally silent machine to work on. <h1>Assumptions</h1> <ul> <li>Your client uses LILO to boot, either just linux or to multi-boot. <li>Your client has no means of booting other than the hard drive. <li>Your client has a supported network interface (if it's a laptop this means builtin NIC, not a PCMCIA card.) </ul> <h1>Overview of process</h1> <p>There are N things you must accomplish to modify the normal LTSP process for this scheme: <ul> <li>Use a LILO compatible bootloader from the Etherboot project. <li>Modify your LILO config to contain a section for this loader. <li>Use a LTSP client kernel with drivers for your hard drive (so you can ask it to spin down). <li>Add a /dev/hdX or /dev/sdX file to your client /dev/ directory which represents the drive. <li>Add the 'hdparm' executable to your client's /sbin directory to use to shut down the drive. <li>Modify the client's <code>/etc/rc.local</code> script to call <code>hdparm -y /dev/hdX</code> to spin the drive down. </ul> <h1>LILO changes</h1> <h2>Etherboot</h2> <p>Since the only thing to boot from in the laptop is the hard drive, you must use an image from the Etherboot project which is created such that LILO can use it to boot. If you go to the <a href="http://www.etherboot.org";>etherboot</a> site, you can select a ROM image which matches your network card, and select, from the drop down menu, "LILO ready". Save (or copy after it's done downloading) the resulting file to the same directory your current kernel lives (typically /boot) and name it, for eg., eb-5.0.3-eepro100.lzlilo. <h2> LILO config</h2> <p>You then add a record to your LILO configuration (/etc/lilo.conf) for this network bootloader and run '/sbin/lilo' to install the new configuration in your hard drives MBR (master boot record). The section I added to my /etc/lilo.conf file is: <p><code><pre> image=/boot/eb-5.0.3-eepro100.lzlilo label=ltsp read-only root=/dev/hda5 </pre></code> <p>I'm not sure that the 'read-only' or 'root=/dev/hda5' sections are necessary, they're just what was there for my normal boot section. <p>Now, when you boot the laptop and you reach the 'LILO:' prompt, type 'ltsp' (or whatever image label you chose) and the etherboot netboot ROM image should begin to load. This will then retrieve the kernel on your LTSP server using TFTP, and control will pass to the LTSP client kernel. <h1>LTSP modifications</h1> <p>At this point, you are a full LTSP client. The only problem is that your hard drive is still spinning, since it spun up on boot so you could load the bootloader off of it. Now that we don't need it anymore, we can ask it to spin down. The easy way to do this is in the rc.local script for the client (/.../ltsroot/etc/rc.local) </body></html>
