ThinBSD Project

ThinBSD Project

$Id: doc.xml,v 1.13 2006/12/17 10:02:46 ftigeot Exp $

Abstract

This manual aims to document how to create a ThinBSD system. If you just want to configure and run one, go read the Administrator Guide.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Required software
2. Reference system creation in /itx
3. Ramdisk Creation
4. User account setup
5. Dhcp parameters
6. X Window environment

Introduction

ThinBSD is a small FreeBSD-based boot image that allows a standard PC to act as a diskless thin client for a Microsoft Windows RDP server.

Chapter 1. Required software

  • FreeBSD 5.x
  • rdesktop-1.3.1

All software is available either in the base system or in ports. We simply copied the necessary files on the filesystem image.

Chapter 2. Reference system creation in /itx

See make.conf for compilation and misc options.

The following instructions install a basic FreeBSD system in a temporary directory /itx :

cd /usr/src
make buildworld
make installworld DESTDIR=/itx
cp /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/GENERIC.hints /itx/boot/device.hints
make kernel KERNCONF=THINBSD DESTDIR=/itx
cd /usr/src/etc
make distribution DESTDIR=/itx

The files in the resulting directory tree will serve as a base for the creation of the ramdisk image in /mnt.

Chapter 3. Ramdisk Creation

This creates a 16 megabyte disk image without a disklabel and with only a small number of inodes to conserve space.

dd if=/dev/zero of=mfsroot bs=1k count=16k
mdconfig -a -t vnode -f mfsroot -u 4
newfs -n -m 0 -o space -i 32768 /dev/md4
mount /dev/md4 /mnt

Use the Makefile in diskimage/ to populate the ramdisk filesystem.

This Makefile manipulates the ramdisk file system to

  • create the final directory structure with mtree
  • copies needed files from the previously created FreeBSD world directory to the ramdisk fs
  • patches some files in the disk image /etc for autologin

TODO: see if some /etc/mtree FreeBSD files can be re-used

TODO: use crunchgen

Chapter 4. User account setup

Re-generate the password database

pwd_mkdb -p -d /mnt/etc /mnt/etc/master.passwd

Edit /home/rdesktop/.xinitrc

/usr/local/bin/rdesktop -f -a 16 192.168.2.2

Chapter 5. Dhcp parameters

The parameters which can be configured on the dhcp server are known in advance by the ramdisk. They are requested in the file /etc/dhclient.conf. When an IP address is bound to the terminal's network interface, the script /etc/dhclient-enter-hooks is executed and the ThinBSD dhcp options are written in /etc/thinbsd.conf.

Chapter 6. X Window environment

The Xorg-thinbsd port is installed in /mnt/usr/X11R6.

X is first started with the -configure option to generate a temporary configuration file by /usr/local/etc/rc.d/xorg.sh. The autodetected values are then used in combination with /etc/X11/xorg.conf.sample and /etc/thinbsd.conf to generate the final /etc/X11/xorg.conf Xorg configuration file.

By default, the port installs itself in /var/tmp. This helps testing when the local machine has also a straight Xorg installation. To produce a production binary tree, PREFIX must be defined to /usr/X11R6. 

make install PREFIX=/usr/X11R6