Knoppix has a built in Terminal Server that we'll be using for our cluster. For those of you not familiar with Terminals, they are usually diskless computers, often slower and cheaper that are used only to provide some interface to a more powerful central CPU. A project that uses this in a great way is the K12 Linux Project. They take old donated hardware and setup schools with terminals into one powerful central CPU to provide a cheap alternative to expensive desktops. Today we'll be using this to keep us from having to install software on our computing nodes in our cluster.

To provide Terminal Services, you must have a DHCP server which hands an IP address to each machine with all of the normal info (gateway, dns, etc..) and also, a path on a TFTP server where the machine can download it's kernel. TFTP is Trivial FTP, it basically doesn't require a password and generally only allows downloading. The machine then downloads it's kernel and mounts it's root partition over NFS. NFS is a network files system (kind of like Window$ file sharing). The machine then runs completely from this NFS mount.

To review.. for Terminal Services you need

• a DHCP and TFTP server to handle PXE boot requests
• a kernel and startup scripts that allow NFS mounting the root partition
• a NFS server to serve up the root partition

Luckily Knoppix packages this all up for you very nicely, and even puts a wizard around it for setup. Also the LTSP Project packages it up very nicely for most distros.

To start Knoppix Terminal Services

• Off of the main menu click Knoppix->Services->Start Terminal Services
• follow the wizard.. (the defaults are generally good)