proxy server

Install Squid
Install squid and squid-common

sudo aptitude install squid squid-common


Edit the squid config file.

sudo vi /etc/squid/squid.conf


Set the allowed hosts.

acl internal_network src 192.168.0.0/24 (Where 192.168.0.0/24 is your IP range.)
http_access allow internal_network

Set the correct permissions.

sudo chown -R proxy:proxy /var/log/squid/
sudo chown proxy:proxy /etc/squid/squid.conf


You will need to restart squid for the changes to take affect.

sudo /etc/init.d/squid restart

Now open up your browser and set your proxy to point to your new squid server on port 3128

Authentication
If you wish to use authentication with your proxy you will need to install apache2 utilities

sudo aptitude install squid squid-common apache2-utils

To add your first user you will need to specify -c

sudo htpasswd -c /etc/squid.passwd first_user

Thereafter you add new users with

sudo htpasswd /etc/squid.passwd another_user

Edit the squid config file

sudo vi /etc/squid/squid.conf


Set the the authentication parameters and the acl

auth_param basic program /usr/lib/squid/ncsa_auth /etc/squid.passwd
auth_param basic children 5
auth_param basic realm NFYE Squid proxy-caching web server
auth_param basic credentialsttl 3 hours
auth_param basic casesensitive off

acl users proxy_auth REQUIRED
acl sectionx proxy_auth REQUIRED
http_access allow users

So this is what your squid.conf should look like.

acl all src 0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0

acl internal_network src 192.168.0.0/24
acl users proxy_auth REQUIRED
acl manager proto cache_object
acl localhost src 127.0.0.1/255.255.255.255
acl to_localhost dst 127.0.0.0/8
acl SSL_ports port 443 563 # https, snews
acl SSL_ports port 873 # rsync
acl Safe_ports port 80 # http
acl Safe_ports port 21 # ftp
acl Safe_ports port 443 563 # https, snews
acl Safe_ports port 70 # gopher
acl Safe_ports port 210 # wais
acl Safe_ports port 1025-65535 # unregistered ports
acl Safe_ports port 280 # http-mgmt
acl Safe_ports port 488 # gss-http
acl Safe_ports port 591 # filemaker
acl Safe_ports port 777 # multiling http
acl Safe_ports port 631 # cups
acl Safe_ports port 873 # rsync
acl Safe_ports port 901 # SWAT
acl sectionx proxy_auth REQUIRED
acl purge method PURGE
acl CONNECT method CONNECT
http_access allow manager localhost
http_access allow users
http_access allow internal_network
http_access deny manager
http_access allow purge localhost
http_access deny purge
http_access deny !Safe_ports
http_access deny CONNECT !SSL_ports
http_access allow localhost
http_access deny all
http_reply_access allow all
icp_access allow all

Redirect the all HTTP traffic.
If you would like to redirect the all HTTP traffic through the proxy without needing to set up a proxy manually in all your applications you will need to add some rules

iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth1 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.0.1:3128
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 3128


Where eth1,eth0 are the LAN, WAN devices and 192.168.0.1 is the IP address of your LAN device.
If you wish to monitor the performance of your proxy you can look as some log parser’s (sarg, calamaris, ect.)

After all, probably you feel the need to monitor the performance of your proxy. Unfortunately, most of the squid log parsers in the Ubuntu repository are configured for Squid 2.x. Nevertheless, squid 3 uses the same log format, so you can change the log file path in your parser config file (sarg, calamaris, etd.) or simply link the log directory of squid 3 to the correct path

ln -s /var/log/squid3 /var/log/squid

Source : kuscsik

Linux Terminal Server Project [1]

The Linux Terminal Server Project ( LTSP) is a configuration of Linux that allows you to connect lots of low-powered thin client terminals to a Linux server. The LTSP provides a simple way to utilise low cost workstations as either graphical or character-based terminals on a GNU/Linux server.

K12LTSP is based on RedHat Fedora Linux and the LTSP terminal server packages (see Section 7.1.1 for more detail). It’s easy to install and configure. It’s distributed under the GNU General Public License. That means it’s free and it’s based on Open Source software.

Once installed, K12LTSP lets you boot diskless workstations from an application server.

What is Thin Client Computing?
Thin client and fat client (also called “thick” or “rich” client) are mostly marketing terms for different configurations of computer. A thin client asks a central server to do most of its processing, and keeps as little hardware and software as possible on the workstation side. Ideally, the user of a thin client should have only a screen, keyboard, mouse and enough computing power to handle display and network communications — you don’t even need (or want) a hard drive. The less you have, the less there can go wrong.

A fat client does as much processing as possible itself and only passes data required for communications and storage on to the server. A standalone PC is the typical fat client with which everyone is familiar.

A thin client may be a software program executing on a generic PC, or it may be a hardware device, called a terminal, designed to provide only user input and display functions. Because old PCs (whether retired, written off, obsolete or just out of fashion) are easier to find than specialised thin client hardware, Edubuntu labs uses them as thin clients, with the appropriate software. Because they don’t do much work themselves, the hardware requirements for these “old” PCs are very basic. Since every client in a thin client network asks a central server to do its work, all the individual workstations look the same: they all share the same server, and they all behave exactly like the server would if you were using it directly.

In addition, although everyone who uses the lab can have their own computing environment stored on the server, with their own files, desktop, and so on, the individual workstations can’t get viruses or be misconfigured by curious learners — there simply isn’t anything to configure! The thin client doesn’t have enough brains to get confused.

This means that the lab computers are trivial to keep up and maintenance is restricted to the server in the back room.

Thin clients are cheaper and require less administration than fat clients. On the other hand, they tend to require far greater network bandwidth, as display data will probably need to be passed to the thin clients. They can’t do a single thing on their own — for each and every action, they need to talk to the server. This means that a server for a room full of thin clients must be much more capable than a server used by fat clients.

One of the advantages that this configuration entails, is that all the software resides on the server, and so you only have to upgrade it once. In a fat client configuration, every workstation has its own copies of the software, and so any upgrade needs to be rolled out to every workstation.

Drawbacks
Graphics-intensive applications such as games will not perform well, as all the display information will have to be pushed over the network by the server. This is hundreds of times slower than driving a local graphics card. Playing action games, however, is not a goal of the Edubuntu lab project.

Hardware
Minimum specifications for LTSP Client and Server

Server

• Memory The server should have 2GB RAM or more (512MB for the base system, and 50MB for each additional client). As long as you’re using it all up, more RAM means more speed (it doesn’t help to have RAM that you don’t use). Too little RAM will bring your server to a crawl as it starts swapping memory to the hard drive. If you run out of memory, performance will be unacceptable.
• Hard drive SCSI is faster than IDE: We’ve seen LTSP servers slow to a crawl when more than 10 clients are running from IDE drives. SCSI drives are better equipped to handle the multiple read/write requests.
• Network Your server will have at least one Ethernet card to create a private network ( 192.168.0.x). This card connects to a switch for terminals. If there is a school network to which you need to connect, or if the school has a internet connection via the server, it will have a second Ethernet card, which will get an IP address on the second network.

Clients

• Memory Client workstations should have at least 32MB of RAM. Clients aren’t that dependent on swap space for extra memory capacity, since memory usage on them is reasonably constant because they don’t execute applications: they only display them.
• Hard drive Client workstations should not have hard drives.
  Network Each client workstation should have one network card with a boot ROM to enable booting from the network.

DRBL (Diskless Remote Boot in Linux) [2]

DRBL (Diskless Remote Boot in Linux) is a free software, open source solution to managing the deployment of the GNU/Linux operating system across many clients. Imagine the time required to install GNU/Linux on 40, 30, or even 10 client machines individually! DRBL allows for the configuration all of your client computers by installing just one server machine.

DRBL provides a diskless or systemless environment for client machines. It works on Debian, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS and SuSE. DRBL uses distributed hardware resources and makes it possible for clients to fully access local hardware. It also includes Clonezilla, a partitioning and disk cloning utility similar to Symantec Ghost®.

Peacefully coexists with other OS
DRBL uses PXE or etherboot, which is similar to Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP), to boot the client machine. While LTSP is a centralized server, all the client machine users’ access the LTSP server to run their applications on it. The client’s keyboard and mouse are used to input whereas the client’s monitor is used to display the results. This is great when useing a thin client.[1]

The server requirements must be increased when more than 20 or 30 clients are being used. On the other hand, DRBL uses NFS and NIS to provide boot services to the client machines. In essence, the DRBL server is just a NFS and NIS server. All users from all client machines just access the DRBL server to request files or authentication.

Packages are loaded to the client machines and they use their own CPU and RAM for processing. A regular PC can be used as the DRBL server since it is only serving files and authenticating. The client machines, however, should be powerful enough to run the applications they need. Typical installations using DRBL to deploy the Linux classroom have around 30 to 40 clients.

///NOTE/// From LTSP 5.0, there is a fat client (diskless workstation, LowFat client) mode, it’s basically quite similar to DRBL

Save on hardware, budget, and maintenance fees

Hard drives are optional for a DRBL client. Actually, the hard drive is just another moving part that creates more noise and is susceptible to failure. If a hard drive is present, the client can be configured to use it as swap space while GNU/Linux is installed and configured on the centralized boot server.

A lot of time can be saved by configuring the client settings at the boot server when using the DRBL centralized boot environment. This gives the system administrator more control over what software configurations are running on each client.

Besides the diskless (fat/powerful) client mode provided by DRBL, DRBL provides other functions, such as:

(a) Clonezilla, the opensource clone system. It’s a server version of imaging tool, similar to Ghost server edition, True image or Rembo.By using Clonezilla, you can clone a 5.6 GBytes system image to 40 computers within 10 minutes via multicasting.

(b) Small Linux diskless soltion. DRBL provides Damn Small Linux (DSL), PuppyLinux… for clients. You can import those small Linux distributions and let client boot from PXE without hardisk, CD or USB flash drive.

(c) Diskless FreeDOS for clients.

(d) Diskless memtest for clients.

(e) Install GNU/Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, Mandriva, SuSE…) for clients from network.
LTSP and DRBL each have their own benefits. Choose the one that is best suited to your needs.

What kind of server and client should I buy if I want to use DRBL ?

This depends on what kind of application and GNU/Linux distribution you want to run.
For the education environment, we recommend the following, but faster and newer equipment will always be better, especially if you want to run “moden” GNU/Linux distribution, such as Fedora 7 or Ubuntu 7.04 with OpenOffice 2.x or Firefox 2.x…:

• Server:
  • • x86 CPU at least 450 MHz
    • Memory at least 256 MB
    • Two or more fast ethernet network interface cards (NICs)
    • At least 10 GB HD space
• Client:
  • • x86 CPU at least 200 MHz
    • Memory at least 128 MB
    • One fast ethernet network interface cards

• Fast ethernet switch
  • • An ethernet hub is NOT acceptable. It’s too slow for network booting and NFS. A fast ethernet switch will reduce the collision domain and give you much smoother deployment. The fast ethernet switch should have enough ports for your clients and your server. You can find low cost 12 and 16-port fast ethernet switches just about anywhere. The 40+ port switches are nice but they typically cost more.

Since DRBL will work with any Pentium class hardware, you can start your PC cluster with just about any machine you have laying around. You can expand your cluster as your budget allows.

Where can I download the source codes ?

You can find all the source codes about DRBL/Clonezilla in http://free.nchc.org.tw/drbl-core/src/

Who is the developer of DRBL/Clonezilla?

DRBL and Clonezilla was developed by NCHC http://www.nchc.org.tw

What is NCHC ?

The National Center for High-Performance Computing is located in Hsinchu, Taiwan. For more details, please visit the NCHC website at http://www.nchc.org.tw

What is CloneZilla?

Clonezilla, based on DRBL, Partition Image, ntfsclone, and udpcast, allows you to do bare metal backup and recovery. Two types of Clonezilla are available, Clonezilla live and Clonezilla server edition. Clonezilla live is suitable for single machine backup and restore. While Clonezilla server edition is for massive deployment, it can clone many (40 plus!) computers simultaneously. Clonezilla saves and restores only used blocks in the harddisk. This increases the clone efficiency. At the NCHC’s Classroom C, Clonezilla server edition was used to clone 41 computers simultaneously. It took only about 10 minutes to clone a 5.6 GBytes system image to all 41 computers via multicasting!

Features of Clonezilla[3]

• Free (GPL) Software.
• Filesystem supported: ext2, ext3, reiserfs, xfs, jfs of GNU/Linux, and FAT, NTFS of MS Windows. Therefore you can clone GNU/Linux or MS windows. For these file systems, only used blocks in partition are saved and restored. For unsupported file system, sector-to-sector copy is done by dd in Clonezilla.
• LVM2 (LVM version 1 is not) under GNU/Linux is supported.
• Multicast is supported in Clonezilla server edition, which is suitable for massively clone. You can also remotely use it to save or restore a bunch of computers if PXE and Wake-on-LAN are supported in your clients.
• Based on Partimage, ntfsclone and dd to clone partition. However, clonezilla, containing some other programs, can save and restore not only partitions, but also a whole disk.
• By using another free software drbl-winroll, which is also developed by us, the hostname, group, and SID of cloned MS windows machine can be automatically changed.

Editions
Clonezilla Live: Allows you to use CD/DVD or USB flash drive to boot and run clonezilla (Unicast only)
Clonezilla server edition: A DRBL server must first be set up in order to use Clonezilla to do massively clone (Both unicast and multicast are supported)

Which one is suitable for diskless gaming platform?

So Which one are the perfect candidate for Diskless Linux Gaming Server and Client? My answer is DRBL, why? Because DRBL client is a fat client that doesn’t rely too much hardware dependencies on Server like LTSP Client.

References :

[1] : https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EdubuntuDocumentation/EdubuntuCookbook/ThinClient

[2] : http://drbl.sourceforge.net/about/

[3] : https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Clonezilla_Server_Edition

Post installation

After a successful installation and boot to the newly installed Ubuntu Lucid with out problem, now it’s time for the post-installation. You might consider to create a user if you want, login as root with your previous password:

Step 1. You will need to edit your hosts file

So I want to install Ubuntu Linux for my other system without using a cdrom, but I dont want to do it on that system, instead of that I want to install it via my current working ubuntu desktop that Im using right now.

Actually I want to build a firewall system complate with hotspot gateway and freeradius. But for now lets start with the basic installation first.

You could follow the instruction from ubuntu help community by Curtis Lee Bolin : Installation From Linux or you can continue to read it from here because I made a little modification for the installation method and I add the instruction for the post-installation and how to setup a firewall base system.

How to install without CD

You can install Ubuntu directly from Ubuntu using debootstrap. Debootstrap installs some essential packages in a directory for use with chroot. Note that the essential packages does not in itself make the system bootable. It just installs what you need to chroot to that directory and use apt-get to install other packages witch makes ubuntu usable.

Step 1. First turn off you computer and plugin your hard drive to it, after turn it on back then check that you have debootstrap installed if not, then you should run the following command below:

# sudo apt-get install debootstrap

(NOTE: if you want to install a newer release than your current system, you normally need to install the backported debootstrap version, see: UbuntuBackports)

Step 2. Partition device and make a file-system, to make it more easy, I use cfdisk to create partition for the other drive.

We will assume /dev/sdb is the storage device for your fresh install. I use my thumbdrive to show you an example how to partition the other drive for another system to setup an installation of ubuntu linux from your current ubuntu desktop.

Remove former partitions and create the new on.

# sudo cfdisk /dev/sdb

cfdisk (util-linux-ng 2.17.2)

Disk Drive: /dev/sdb
Size: 2056257536 bytes, 2056 MB
Heads: 64   Sectors per Track: 62   Cylinders: 1012

Name        Flags      Part Type  FS Type          [Label]        Size (MB)
——————————————————————————
sdb1        Boot        Primary   W95 FAT32 (LBA)                   2056.00

[ Bootable ]  [  Delete  ]  [   Help   ]  [ Maximize ]  [  Print   ]
[   Quit   ]  [   Type   ]  [  Units   ]  [  Write   ]

Use your arrow key to the [ Delete ] option to remove your partition on the other drive:

Name        Flags      Part Type  FS Type          [Label]        Size (MB)
——————————————————————————
Pri/Log   Free Space                        2056.00

[   Help   ]  [   New    ]  [  Print   ]  [   Quit   ]  [  Units   ]
[  Write   ]

Create new partition from free space, then you will see your drive is empty, now select [ New ] to create your new partition and select [ Primary ] :

Name        Flags      Part Type  FS Type          [Label]        Size (MB)
——————————————————————————
Pri/Log   Free Space                        2056.00

Size (in MB): 1500

You need to enter new size limit for primary partition, press backspace then enter the size yo want, for example I use 1500MB and 500MB++ for the extended and swap partition.

Now create the rest of your free space as an extended and swap, to change type of your newly created partition navigate to [ Type ] press Enter and select 83 for linux and 82 for swap.

Name        Flags      Part Type  FS Type          [Label]        Size (MB)
——————————————————————————
sdb1        Boot        Primary   Linux                             1499.34
sdb5                    Logical   Linux swap / Solaris               556.67

and select your primary partition as bootable by press the option [ Bootable ]. The write down your partition and quite cfdisk.

Are you sure you want to write the partition table to disk? (yes or no): yes

then [ Quit ] and start to make the file-system

# sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1

Step 3. Mount that new partition.

# sudo mkdir /mnt
# sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt

Step 4. Create the new install.

# sudo debootstrap lucid /mnt

Step 5. Copy files to the new install to keep your repositories

# sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /mnt/etc/apt/

Step 6. Chroot to your new install.

# sudo mount –bind /dev /mnt/dev
# sudo mount -t proc /proc /mnt/proc
# sudo chroot /mnt /bin/bash

Step 7. Upgrade the new install.

# apt-get update
# apt-get install language-pack-en-base

Note: I install the language-pack-en-base before upgrade to avoid perl warnings as shown below.

perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LANGUAGE = (unset),
LC_ALL = (unset),
LANG = “en_US.utf8″
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale (“C”).
locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory

then continue with :

# apt-get upgrade

Step 8. Install Grub and Linux Kernel.

# apt-get install grub-pc linux-image

Step 9. set root password.

To set a root password.

(NOTE: You must at least set a root password if you aren’t adding a user)

# passwd

It should now be safe to reboot, you may want the next few things.

Step 10. If you want to access it with ssh after reboot.

Use vi or install nano to edit /etc/hostname.

Remove anytext in this file and add the hostname you would like.

# vi /etc/hostname

yourhostnameyouwant

and then edit /etc/network/interfaces

# vi /etc/network/interfaces

Add this lines to /etc/network/interfaces. This will start eth0 at boot and request an ip with dhclient.

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

Next you need to install ssh

# apt-get install ssh

Turn off your computer, remove the new installation drive and plugin to the other system, and bootup the system. If you want the Ubuntu Gnome desktop, continue with Step 11, but if you want to setup a firewall base system, so just skip the Step 11 and Step 12, so it safe for you turn off your system and boot the drive from other system.

Step 11. Install ubuntu-desktop.

# apt-get install ubuntu-desktop ubuntu-standard

Step 12. Reboot and keep those fingers crossed.

# sudo halt or sudo reboot

To be continue on Part 2

Last time I posted a tutorial about to setup your-free-domain.co.cc, if you don’t have any of this free domain name account, you can get it by using this search form to find out which name you like, after that proceed to registering your new account.

This domain is free to use for personal purpose but they will charge you for business at minimum price at $3 per domain name, but if you make a donation to them about $5, you can have around 100 domain name, normal account will get about 4 domain only.

After completing How to setup your free domain name in Blogger – Part 1 process, to make your free domain working with Blogger all you need to do now is login to your Blogger account and start doing the next procedure.

If you feel uncomfortable with image size, you can maximize it by click the maximize button located on the top left corner of the images .

Wokeyy.. let’s do it…

Step 01
At your Dashboard click at “Setting” link on your Blog.

Step 02
At the navigation menu “Setting” tab, click the sub menu “Publishing”.

Step 03
Then you will see the “Custom Domain” link, click on it.

Step 04
Then you will see the “Switch to advanced settings”, for more infos, if you don’t have any domain yet, you can purchase it through Blogger.

Step 05
Key in your domain name in the text box, remember that you should include the “www” subdomain before your top level domain name, otherwise Blogger will reject your request if you put naked domain name e.g. kitablinux.co.cc. By the way if you like to use a different subdomain like blog.kitablinux.co.cc, you can do it by adding up first the CNAME at your co.cc domain hosting.

After that key in the “Word Verification” text and click “SAVE SETTING” button.

Step 06
After doing all the above successfully, now you need to redirect your domain name, click the checkbox to redirect your domain, but please make sure first that you already Create ‘A’ NAME records for your naked domain as I did mention in the Part 1 of this tutorial, if not you should check for it first or your redirection won’t work at all.

Enter your “Word Verification” in the textbox and click SAVE SETTING button to proceed, after completing all the steps above now try to view your domain either using full web address with subdomain e.g. “http://www.kitablinux.co.cc” or naked domain e.g. “http://kitablinux.co.cc”.


Related Article : How to setup your free domain name in Blogger – Part 1

p/s: currently I am working with another tutorial about setting a domain to use with google apps(mail/sites/blogger)+web hosting, yaa dude you can use one single domain name for multipurpose, don’t waste it, make fortune or wheel of fortune.. weeee…… chow cinchau….

If you new to Ubuntu Linux, sometime you might face a problem in configuring display in Ubuntu Linux, it’s might cause of un-supported monitor or lcd on your system.

To solve the problem you could done it by following the instruction below using the xrandr. First open your terminal from your desktop, go to Ubuntu Main Menu button > Accessories > Terminal, and type the following command  to find your default display adapter:

# xrandr

# Screen 0: minimum 320 x 240, current 1280 x 800, maximum 1280 x 800

default connected 1280×800+0+0 0mm x 0mm (you’ll see the default word that I just bold it, is my default display adapter, but it might different with your’s)

1280×800       50.0*

1024×768       51.0

960×540        52.0

840×525        53.0

800×600        54.0

800×512        55.0

720×450        56.0

680×384        57.0     58.0

640×512        59.0

640×480        60.0     61.0

576×432        62.0

512×384        63.0

400×300        64.0

320×240        65.0

# cvt / gtf 1280 800 60 (note: you can use cvt or gtf, but dont type both just one) i.e # cvt 1280 800 60

then you will get the following messages

# 1280×800 59.81 Hz (CVT 1.02MA) hsync: 49.70 kHz; pclk: 83.50 MHz

Modeline “1280x800_60.00″   83.50  1280 1352 1480 1680  800 803 809 831 -hsync +vsync

Then to add new mode run the following command :

# xrandr –newmode  ”1280x800_60.00″   83.50  1280 1352 1480 1680  800 803 809 831 -hsync +vsync

after that add your desire mode to the default display adapter of yours by using the command line option below:

#xrandr –addmode default “1280x800_60.00″

And to set up your screen display with new resolution, run the command below:

# xrandr –output default –mode 1280×80

Before and after screenshot:

800×600

1240×800

Although this site was dedicated to the Open Source Softwares technologies for cyber cafe, but the document still got a relation to the FOSS technology. Perhaps this old instruction could give us some motivation to search and to develop new kind of methods to full utilizes open source softwares for cyber cafe purpose.

This old document just made me to remember my old days dealing with NT 4.0 / 2k Terminal Server running with Citrix Metaframe before I met Linux and LTSP, but right now I was falling in LOVE with DRBL.

So guys, I hope you all could give some suggestion or some ideas for us to share at OSSCC Community, and please have a look to the document below.

Creating Linux Diskless Client For Windows 2k/2003 Terminal Service
By Avinoam Levkovich

version 1.0

The company I work for has many old computers that are no longer suitable for the common application today ( try Running Office XP/2k on a P-I 100MHZ with 32MB Ram, and you will find out that this is not a pleasant experience ). We start looking for a solution that will save the money of buying new computers or Brand thin-clients. The goal was to use our old computer and still get good performance . We find the Linux solution just great for my goals.

we still use our old computer and the only investment we will have to make is buying the Windows 2K/2003 licenses and hardware .

The solution is actually an integration of the following Sub systems : LTSP, rdesktop and wilisystem , fortunately those systems are integrating quite naturally as you will see .

LTSP  : ( http://www.ltsp.org )

Is the backbone of all the system which provide the Linux terminal services for the diskless client. after installing LTSP it create the /opt/ltsp/i386 Directory.

this Directory will be the root system of our diskless clients. when booting the client it will get its kernel by tftp from LTSP and then it will mount /opt/ltsp/i386 as its root directory.

So after your client finish its boot process you will be logged to your LTSP Server and your file system will be the /opt/ltsp/i386 Directory. and then the Wilisystem start Working.

Rdesktop : (http://www.rdesktop.org )

Microsoft has developed a protocol called RDP which is used for the Terminal Server communication with the client.

The rdesktop package is an application that opens RDP Session with a Windows Server and by doing it , the Linux station become a Windows Terminal Client.

Wilisystem : ( http://www.wilisystem.com/ )

The Wilisystem is actually a patch for the LTSP server. what is does is make the connection to the Windows Terminal Server as easy as it can get.

The Wilisystem uses the rdesktop package and finish the Diskless client boot process with the Windows login screen. by doing this it make the LTSP Session invisible to the user who feel as if he is plugged directly to the Windows Server .

I must thank the wilisystem developers for a great job !

Rom-O-Matic : ( www.rom-o-matic.net )

This is where you get you boot image for you selected boot Device ( I used a floppy ). after specifying your Ethernet card model you can download your boot image.

Great implementation for a great idea.

please read the documentation from the Above web site’s. when you read the documentation you will discover all the options and benefits that you can get from this system and how to tune it to your needs.

what you need :

1. Linux Server , I used P-III 800 with 256MB RAM , With Red Hat 9.0 .

2. Diskless Client, I used a P-I 133MHZ , 32MB RAM, Ati – Rage XL (mach64 Family) Display Adaptor, with the intel 100/pro Ethernet .

3. Windows 2K/2003 Server With Terminal Services installed, configured and Running .
I used a P-4 1.7MHZ with 256MB RAM.

Create your diskless Client Environment:

The Diskless Client will be called ws009.

The Linux Server Side :

1. Find your Client ( ws009 ) Display card Model and his Ethernet mac address and write them down, you will need them later.

2. Download and install the Following packages from http://www.ltsp.org :

ltsp_core-X.X-X.rpm
ltsp_kerne-X.X-X.rpm
ltsp_x_core-X.X-X.rpm
ltsp_x_fonts-X.X-X.rpm

3. Install the rdesktop package from your RedHat CD or Download it form http://www.rdesktop.org/ .

4. Download the wilisystem patch from www.wilisystem.com , and install it .

5. Make sure that the packages for the Dhcp,Nfs,Tftp servers are installed.

6. Edit the file /opt/ltsp/install_scripts/CONFIG and change the settings to match your network Setting.

7. Run /opt/ltsp/templates/ltsp_initialize

# cd /opt/ltsp/templates/ltsp_initialize

# ./ltsp_initialize

8. Copy /etc/dhcpd.conf.example to /etc/dhcpd.conf and check that all the network numbers match your network Configuration.
Check the Mac address of your client and update the client configuration section ( host ws009 ) in the dhcpd.conf file.

Here is my /etc/dhcpd.conf :

ddns-update-style none;

default-lease-time 21600;
max-lease-time 21600;

option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
option broadcast-address 192.168.1.255;
option routers 192.168.1.100;
option domain-name-servers 192.168.1.100;
option domain-name “my-domain.com”;
option root-path “192.168.1.100:/opt/ltsp/i386″;

option option-128 code 128 = string;
option option-129 code 129 = text;

shared-network WORKSTATIONS {
subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
}
}

group {
use-host-decl-names on;
option log-servers 192.168.1.100;

host ws009 {
hardware ethernet 00:02:B3:2D:B0:D2;
fixed-address 192.168.1.113;
filename “/lts/vmlinuz-2.4.21-ltsp-1″;
}

}

9. Check /etc/exports. check that the IP numbers match your network Configuration. if everything is fine run :

# exportfs -r
# exportfs -a

10. Check that your client is properly listed in /etc/hosts. if your client name is w009 and your domain is my-domain.com you should add a line to your /etc/hosts file like :

192.168.1.112 ws009.my-domain.com ws009 this name (ws009) should be the same as the client name ( host ws009) that you configured in your dhcp.conf

12. Check /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/lts.conf at the end of the file you should see the wilisystem configuration

Here is my Wilisystem Config , I added my remarks for the configuration part:

# Config part for the http://www.wilisystem.com
# example ws009 accessing the W2K/NT4 TSE
[ws009]
RDPSERVER = 192.168.1.3 # The ip of your W2K/NT4 Terminal Server
RUNLEVEL = 7 # runlevel 7 for wilisystem
SERVER = 192.168.1.100 # The IP of your LTSP server
XSERVER = auto # auto Discovery of your Display-card

# if your display card fail in the auto mod, you should download the proper ltsp_x336-XXX from www.ltsp.org and specify it like XSERVER = XF86_Mach64

X_MODE_0 = 1024×768 # The Resolution that you want, ( 1024×768 , 800×600 …)

X_COLOR_DEPTH = 15 # The color Depth .. i think win2k server only support 8 bit (256) color.

# the folowing line configure your mouse , check the Documentation page for more mouse type configuration : http://www.ltsp.org/documentation/

X_MOUSE_PROTOCOL = “PS/2″
X_MOUSE_DEVICE = “/dev/psaux”
X_MOUSE_RESOLUTION = 400
X_MOUSE_BUTTONS = 3

13. Make sure that the tftp service is enabled in the xinetd directory. run :

# service dhcpd restart
# service xinetd restart

# service nfs restart

The verify that the tftp server is running. run : netstat -anp | grep “:69 “

you should get something like : udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:69 0.0.0.0:* 799/xinetd

verify dhcp server by : netstat -anp | grep “:67 “
you should get something like : udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:67 0.0.0.0:* 2086/dhcpd

If dhcp is not working try restarting it .
If tftp is not working then you have to enable tftp in /etc/xinetd.d/tftp and restart it.

14. The default runlevel is specified in /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/lts.conf is runlevel 5 BUT in the wilisystem section it override the default with its own Runlevel 7 ( if you take a look at /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/inittab you will see wilisystem Configuration for this runlevel.). if you exerience problems you should change it. try to load your client with one of the other clients configuration that you have in /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/lts.conf , ws001 is a good start . remember to change your dhcp configuration and your hosts file to match your new host name. and choose the runlevel 3 . this will only load the ltsp system without trying to connect to the Windows Terminal Server.

then you will be able to debug the system.

The Diskless Client Side

1. Get your initial client boot kernel from : http://rom-o-matic.net/
To creat a boot floppy from the image you downloaded run :
# cat eb-5.0.10-yournic.lzdsk > /dev/fd0
where “eb-5.0.10-yournic.lzdsk” is where you stored your downloaded ROM image.

2. Reboot the client with the boot floppy that you created from the boot image.

After The boot process finished ,you should get the Windows logon screen

Problems
=====================

i experienced screen flickers when the X Server was trying to load and failes with message “no screens found ” , it was because the system didnt recognized my display adaptor , which is “mach64″ family , it was solved after I downloaded the proper Xfree 3.3 Drivers from the ltsp site. and I used the ” XSERVER = XF86_Mach64 ” in the lts.conf file.

My actual problem is :

1. the UTP cable on POE Adapter is not working to transmit data via it own UTP cable, to buy a new one it cost about $25-$60 buck(RM80 – RM200), but why spending when you can still use the POE Adapter as power supply, except for the broken UTP cable on the POE Adapter.
2. the current UTP installed with Linksys WAP54GPE with RJ45 PCB Socket attached on it is not working too.

the power is there but not the network connection

My Solution :
Splitting 1 UTP cable into POE connector and networking cable. At the first end of the UTP cable clamped as normal straight cable, and the second end we split it one as data cable and the other as power supply cable. So pins 1,2,3 and 6 will be connected to the switch.

like this one

We see that the TX (transmitter) pins are connected to the corresponding RX (receiver) pins, plus to plus and minus to minus. You can also see that both the blue and brown wire pairs on pins 4, 5, 7, and 8 are not used in either standard, but actually it was used as power transmiter between the POE Adapter and WAP54GPE Access Point.


What you may not realize is that, these same pins 4, 5, 7, and 8 can be used as data or network cable as well if we going to split one UTP cable to be connected to two NIC on the same computer system such as linux pc based router/firewall, so for pins 4,5,7 and 8 are used as power supply pins.

This is because I was so eager and can wait to buy Ironman 2 and Clash Of The Titan DVD.

After searching and googleling for solution then I’ve find out how to upgrade to Limewire 5.5.8.

Just follow these simple instruction here :

1. sudo add-apt-repository “deb http://archive.canonical.com/ lucid partner”
2. sudo apt-get update
3. download Limewire Basic 5.5.8 for Ubuntu Linux from here http://www.limewire.com/LimeWireSoftLinuxDeb
4. search for the downloaded file, double click and follow the installation prosess

If you prompted with authentication key for Limewire Pro, just ignore it, click cancel and proceed to use it as usual.

There is another software you might consider to try, I just installed it but dont have any intentions to explorer gtk-gnutella, but you can give a try.

One of the most important thing that cyber cafe or internet cafe owners should not forget is a firewall. I am not going to brief about firewall history here, but from my experiences dealing with business that has an internet access, a firewall is a must.

They are many kind of firewall system and application you can try for free, and one of them are Smoothwall Express 3.0 polar. Further more SmoothWall Express is not just a firewall but it can also to be setup as a proxy server. Yeah, normally a cyber cafe really needs a proxy server to release the burden of their connection.

Installing and configuring a Linux firewall can be one of the most difficult tasks Linux administrators face. In addition to actually configuring the gateway, few admin pros have expertise with securing the network through ipchains.

Not to worry. The SmoothWall Linux distribution simplifies the otherwise daunting task of sharing Internet connections and providing network security. This relatively new Linux distribution is used for one purpose: to provide an easy-to-configure firewall with minimal hardware requirements. Typically, you can convert an older desktop system that has outlived its word-processing and Web-surfing usefulness into a formidable firewall box. SmoothWall is able to run on processors as old as a 386 with 8 MB of RAM. In this Daily Drill Down, I’ll discuss how to install and configure SmoothWall.

What you need

• Intel-based PC (386 or greater) with 8 MB of RAM
• CD-ROM drive
• 100 MB of disk space
• Access to a CD-ROM writer

SmoothWall Express Polar Screenshot

Nice simple and slick web administration interface

Source : http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1053408.html