Network Boot to Internet

[jbclarkman]

I'm looking for a way to have a thin client boot to the network which than goes out and tells the client to goto the internet and run a program like citrix.

Any ideas, I have tapped all of my resources and can't find a good way... Please help

[groovicus]

AFAIK, all a thin client consists of a graphics card, a network card, and interfaces for the mouse and keyboard. They need to be connected to a server, which is actually where the cpu, ram, and applications reside... and the server provides the link to the internet.

You're question is extremely vague. What network do you want it to boot from? What exactly are you tryingto do? What have you tried? The local university uses Sun Solaris OS for it's network, and all the terminals in the lab are thin clients.

I don't know why you couldn't use Linux I guess...

Anyway... we need a lot more information for this to go anywhere.

[jbclarkman]

I'm working for a company who wants to have the computers they take(from legal contracts and such) become true 100% thin clients. But the thing is, all we want to do is run somthing that tells them to run a program like citrix, but we want them never to see anything else. All we want them to see is the good old black screen saying whatever, and loads them right into our enviornment over the internet.

[groovicus]

I don't know squat about networking...but since nobody else is pitching in....

I looked at the website for citrix...it is an application that runs on various platforms. I don't have time to explore what it does other than it is a secure environment to access from anywhere..

If all you want the user to see is citrix, you need your own server for the clients to tie into. A thin client such as you are talking about is not capable of doing anything on it's own, other than acting as an interface with the server....a thin client is a monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse, and an interface to the server....

Citrix has to be running and installed on a server somewhere in order to access it...otherwise it just is another application on your workstation....

For example, at school we have thin clients in the computer labs. When we log on, we go to a gnome desktop, and we run our applications from there. (ie programming ide, browser, etc.) I suppose if they wanted to, they could set it up so all we could do is access the programming ide.

Hopefully someone that has some knowledge of this will step in and clarify it better, because I only have a basic understanding of how it works....I definately don't know how to set it up.