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Linux on Wyse Winterm S10 Thin Clients

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Revision as of 23:42, 22 March 2014 by Mirage335 (talk | contribs)

The Wyse Winterm SX0 S10 features:

  • AMD Geode processor 333MHz
  • 32MB internal flash memory ([1]) behind an ATA/IDE disk controller ([2])
  • 64-128MB RAM (4 x [3])
  • BIOS capable of booting from USB flash drives

This allows for small Linux distributions to be installed on the internal flash memory in place of the very limited original OS. Distributions too large to fit into the 32MB internal flash drive can still be booted and run from an external USB flash drive, though boot time may take a while.

Step 1: Configuring the BIOS to boot from a USB drive

This part is very simple. Before inserting the power cable, connect a USB keyboard, and VGA monitor to the terminal. Then, hold down the del key and plug in the power cable. After a moment you should hear a beep, and the terminal will boot to a green BIOS screen.

First, you will be prompted to enter a password, which by default should be "Fireport". Then, you will be able to rearrange the boot order to attempt USB boot first.

The BIOS also provides options to set the date/time, change the amount of memory allocated for video use (the minimum being 4MB), and select whether or not the terminal can be shut down while power is connected.

Save your configuration and exit the BIOS.

Step 2: Creating a bootable Linux USB drive

Virtually unbearable.

Bootloader

Install syslinux 2.x on a linux machine and follow the DSL USB installation instructions .

Newer versions of syslinux tend to hang. Modern hybrid LiveCD ISOs, GRUB2, etc, also fail.

Performance

CPU is adequate for basic web browsing and similar kiosk tasks.

Lack of RAM is a more serious problem, even with 128MB RAM. Knoppix with LXDE, Damn Small Linux (DSL), Tiny Core Linux and similar may be acceptable choices. Dillo and Midori are reasonable web browser choices. Firefox under Knoppix ran out of memory on startup, Firefox under DSL was slow to the point of barely usable.

USB drives are recommended for any serious use (including host OS). IDE interface seems to be operating rather slowly, with extreme CPU usage. Suspect it operates only in PIO mode, and is not DMA capable.

Step 3: ChRooting a more powerful OS

Loading a full Ubuntu or Debian system outright may be infeasible or challenging due to RAM or bootloader limitations. Alternatively, DSL supports the ChRoot and debootstrap commands. Conveniently, it is therefore possible to quickly deploy a full Debian ChRoot for such purposes as efficiently hosting a full-featured webserver.

Unfortunately, at present it seems Debian packages rely on kernels newer than 2.4, which DSL does not provide. Debian's Live CD, or possibly SUSE's JeOS may be more usable alternatives.

Additionally, it may be simplest to construct the ChRoot from a full-scale computer. See https://github.com/mirage335/PortableChRoot for an easy way to containerize this.

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