[ale] Ubuntu LiveCD over nfsroot

[Brian Pitts]

Christopher Fowler wrote:
> 
> No,  I'm not doing it for installs but installs would be a side benefit.
> I could boot a PC and via PXE load the live CD
> 
> The idea is that my daughter is getting older (5) and playing on Webkinz
> and I want to give her a computer that it has almost no maintenance, I
> control, and can easily be fixed.
> 
> I had an idea of creating a "sandbox" system where at boot her home
> directory will be created from a file.  This way she can not mess up
> preferences.  On her Mac she was always bringing up the wrong window by
> accidentally clicking on the wrong thing.  I have installed a full PC
> for her but I have a thin client device I want to use diskless.  I just
> need to upgrade its memory to about 512m.  

A few thought:

If you stick with a full PC, Pessulus [0] provides a simple interface 
for locking down many of GNOME's settings.

If you want a diskless system where every change is rolled back on 
reboot, just run off the live cd locally. If the thin client doesn't 
have a CD-ROM, make use of Debian Live's Web Boot capability [1], which 
lets you load a squashfs image over http.

If you want to run applications on the thin client but access the 
filesystem over NFS, have a look the DisklessUbuntuHowto. [2]

If you want to run the thin client in full-blown LTSP mode, take a look 
at ThinClientHowto [3] or the Edubuntu server.

[0] http://www.linux.com/feature/62060
[1] 
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-live-devel/2007-September/002133.html
[2] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DisklessUbuntuHowto
[3] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ThinClientHowto

-Brian