# Laptop as a "semi thin" client

## BradB

Hi all, I'm plannig on getting an older laptop (~P2 300) soon.  I'm going outline my ideas and I'd appreciate any tips or comments.

My basic idea is to get Gentoo onto the laptop using my base system (Athlon 800, running Gentoo) and distcc.  Also to save space on the laptop's harddrive I plan to use NFS to mount the workstation's /usr/portage directory.  Obviously these need to be set up before I begin emerging my system, so I'm going to use Knoppix as a distro to get me going & proceed with the alternate Gentoo install, this is how I got Gentoo on my main box so I'm familiar with it.

By the time I get to emerging, hopefully not much will need to be DL'd (dialup  :Sad: ) because it will look like the portage tree is there already, and distcc should get me running reasonably quickly.

After I get Gentoo on my laptop I want to use it as a "semi-thin" client via wireless 802.11b.  What I mean by "semi-thin" is that when I'm within range of my workstation I want to run as a thin client, routing all my X apps through the lappy.  Then whenever I need to go away from home the laptop should function as a standalone computer (minus the portage tree, as I won't by upgrading when not connected to the workstation).  Also I want to keep my laptop and workstation users synced up, I'm planning on using Unison for this.

Should I run the two "modes" (thin/standalone) of the laptop as two seperate users?  Can I remotely log in to the workstations X from KDM or is some commandline magic required there?

I think maybe 2 users (thin and roam) would be nice, use "thin" around the house, and log into "roam" when I leave the house (well before I leave, so I can sync my /home directory).

What do people think, am I dreaming - or is this a good way to make use of my resources?

Cheers

Brad

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## masseya

 *BradB wrote:*   

> After I get Gentoo on my laptop I want to use it as a "semi-thin" client via wireless 802.11b.  What I mean by "semi-thin" is that when I'm within range of my workstation I want to run as a thin client, routing all my X apps through the lappy.  

 

It certainly sounds like you have put a lot of thought into this, but I'm not sure I'm clear on what benefit this particular action gives you.  Can you explain a little more?

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## BradB

Well - I'm not sure that it gives me much benefit, that's why I asked here  :Smile: 

I think it'll let me take advantage of the much more grunty workstation's processor, but give me the option of moving around the house.

Brad

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## masseya

Well, I suppose if you are doing a lot of heavy lifting then that would be a very good solution.  I probably wouldn't do it unless I was going to be doing some serious computing.  It seems like a lot of effort.

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## pilla

You can install a regular gentoo and ssh to the workstation to run programs there. You can redirect the X output:

In your notebook:

```
% xhost + athlon

% ssh athlon

export DISPLAY=notebook:0

```

Where <athlon> is the name of your athlon machine, and <notebook> the name of your notebook  :Cool: 

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## masseya

I thought you could do native X forwarding with ssh by using the -X commandline flag like:

```
bash$ ssh -X user@server.org
```

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## pilla

Interesting... I've never tried that! I am from old school (I learnt that when I was using SunOS 4 and telnet  :Cool: ) 

 *Tristam29 wrote:*   

> I thought you could do native X forwarding with ssh by using the -X commandline flag like:
> 
> ```
> bash$ ssh -X user@server.org
> ```
> ...

 

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## BradB

Well I'm getting there.  I've bootstrapped, and emerged system using distcc - while using the portage tree from my base machine.  I had troubles with the gentoo-sources kernel hanging after local.start runs (sulogin problems??) so ended up building vanilla-sources as a kernel.  Just waiting for my kde to compile now - from other posts it doesn't play nice with distcc, so I'm doing it all on the notebook - sigh  :Smile: 

Cheers

Brad

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## zojas

 *Tristam29 wrote:*   

> I thought you could do native X forwarding with ssh by using the -X commandline flag like:
> 
> ```
> bash$ ssh -X user@server.org
> ```
> ...

 

even better. make sure these lines are in your /etc/ssh/sshd_config on the machine you are sshing TO:

```

X11Forwarding yes

X11DisplayOffset 10

XAuthLocation /usr/X11R6/bin/xauth

```

and make sure this is in /etc/ssh/ssh_config on the machine you are sshing FROM:

```

ForwardX11 yes

```

then as long as your display is set before you ssh, X will be automatically forwarded and encrypted.

the method above where you ssh in, then set your display by hand will I believe result in your X traffic not being encrypted.

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## schleppy

i don't know how related this is, but i've been thinking of using an old laptop with a grub floppy to mount an ltsp (on my main system) around the house, and then to still be usable on the go. I guess one can still access the local drive (on the laptop) to sync up. just a thought.

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