Initial writing - November 2000
THIS DOCUMENT IS FOR DOCUMENTATION PURPOSES ONLY!
Again this information was gathered for documentation purposes only. This document is NOT a HOWTO. However reading this documentation may in fact help others utilize Linux for yet another networking solution.
I.) Introduction & Information
I.) Introduction & Information
This information is being developed to deploy a method of providing services using a dumb terminal environment that will allow access to both Linux and Windows 9x resources. The importance of the research is primarily the amount of money that has been spent at many sites with limited budgets toward licensing operating systems and application products. The importance of extending the usefulness of dollars already spent and the ability to introduce a low cost operating system like Linux with this type of deployment environment. Often times sites prefer the Windows 9x family of operating system software but are discouraged with it do to the high end maintenance of the product. To address this methods will be examining methods that will make each session disposable. This will allow each new logon a fresh and pre designed session that can allow for operational services to be provided from a single area. The two major tools that will allow the ability to deploy a Windows 9x disposable session are Linux and Win4Lin.
Objective:
Linux and X are stable. Linux and X are perfect to address the deployment of the sessions to the dumb terminal. Linux and X are both mature. Linux and X can be obtained under open source. Linux and X are cost effective for deploying any Linux application software. Desktop environments such as Gnome and KDE are rapidly making themselves know in industry.Why Windows 95?
Windows 95 was selected for this research primarily many sites have large numbers of licenses that can be used for services deployment and extend the life of the license. Windows 95 requires less resources than Windows 98 and this can relate to a cost savings in server resources.What is Win4Lin?
Win4Lin is a product from Netraverse that allows you to install and run Windows 9x native on top of Linux.
What type of hardware for this model?
The configurations descriptions are namely designed for this project of providing disposable Windows 95 sessions. This model utilizes a modified method of deploying Windows 95. The installation of Windows 95 & Win4Lin are standard as described in Win4Lin documentation.
Normal Win4Lin
The idea here is to create a master read only copy of Windows 95 and allow multiple user to use it. This idea is not a new one however, with Win4Lin this puts a new spin on the subject. Since Win4Lin allows the Windows 95 session to be installed and run on a native Linux file system this opened new doors for testing that with a bit of trial and error have yielded a very stable and controlled fashion to deploy Windows with a minimal amount of configuration.
The actual install of the Windows 95 using Win4Lin is standard to the point of providing the services to a user. The process is as follows:
To start the process of creating a session when using
the gdm we add the following script to a file called Default in the /etc/X11/gdm/PreSession/
#!/bin/sh
########################################################################
# This presession script is designed to provide access
for disposable
# sessions of Windows 95
########################################################################
# This will create a skeleton folders
/win4lin/winskel1.pl $USER
# This will create symlinks from a read only master configured
copy
/bin/cp -Rs /win4lin/win /win4lin/$USER
# This will let windows have access to files it wants
to manage
/bin/rm -f /win4lin/$USER/win/windows/user.dat
/bin/rm -f /win4lin/$USER/win/windows/system.dat
/bin/cp /win4lin/win/windows/user.dat /win4lin/$USER/win/windows
/bin/cp /win4lin/win/windows/system.dat /win4lin/$USER/win/windows
# This will grant the user the access he needs.
/bin/chown -R $USER:$USER /win4lin/$USER/win
To create a skeleton folder with symlinks and some required
files a script called winskel1.pl is used. This script makes required
settings for the Windows session to operate correctly and performs some
operations to make StarOffice function correctly also.
#!/usr/bin/perl
########################################################
# This script creates the skeleton folders for a win95
# install to allow for a shared session setup of windows
# using win4lin.
#########################################################
# Set location variables
#########################
$homeDir="/nishome/$ARGV[0]";
$winMaster="/win4lin/win";
$winMerge="/win4lin/.merge";
$winTargetRoot="/win4lin/$ARGV[0]";
$winTarget="/win4lin/$ARGV[0]/win";
$trimer= (length $winMaster);
#########################
# Code section
#########################
@dirs=`/bin/find $winMaster -name "*" -type d`;
system "/bin/mkdir $winTargetRoot";
system "/bin/mkdir $winTarget";
foreach $dirName (@dirs) {
$tempString = substr($dirName,$trimer,((length
$dirName)-$trimer)-1);
#print STDOUT "$winTarget$tempString\n"
;
system "/bin/mkdir '$winTarget$tempString/'";
}
#############################################
# Special setting for StarOffice52
##############################################
system "/bin/rm -rf \"$winTarget/Office52/user/\"";
system "/bin/cp -R \"$winMaster/Office52/user\" \"$winTarget/Office52/user\"";
exit;
At this point the session has been created and is ready to be called upon to run.