ThinSTATION Image creation, download and installation

ThinSTATION Desktop Screen

First - a little background:.

ThinSTATION is a jack of all trades. According to the ThinSTATION web site, ThinSTATION is "a thin client Linux distribution that makes a PC a full-featured thin client supporting all major connectivity protocols: Citrix ICA, NoMachine NX, MS Windows terminal services (RDP), Tarantella, X, telnet, tn5250, VMS term and SSH." What a mouthful! In simpler terms, it is a light weight Linux distribution that contains just enough software to provide access to many other possibly more powerful machines over an ethernet network. It also includes some user contributed add ons like the Firefox browser, including flash extensions, PDF viewers, and XMMS multimedia player. There is also a package called "powertools" that gives some basic Unix tools like find, ifconfig, and netstat. My purpose for wanting to get ThinSTATION running on my Netvista was because it would allow me to connect remotely to any of my other computers via any method I was already using on full fledged PCs. I could ssh to my web server and modify a file, VNC to my sons Windows XP desktop using VNC and RDP to my Windows 2000 SQL servers at work. All while listening to mp3s using Firefox and XMMS on the local desktop. The browser is also very useful for administrative duties on my m0n0wall firewall, webserver, and proxy server all of which provide web admin interfaces. And besides all of that, it was LINUX, and it was just cool. Kind of like the mountain climber, I wanted to do it because I could!

Here are the steps you will need to complete to get ThinSTATION running on your Netvista:.

Decide on Image creation method
Download or create CF image
Make CF card bootable and copying the files to it
Install CF card
Boot and test

Or you can cheat and take the easy way out, by downloading my working boot files. But remember, you will need to make the CF card bootable before you copy these files to it.

Decide on image method:.

There are three different ways to create a ThinSTATION CF image:

Download prebuilt images
Use the TS-O-Matic web links to create and download the image
Download the ThinSTATION software and build the images on your own Linux PC

To be honest I have not tried to use any of the pre-built images with a Netvista, while it may be possible to get things to work this way, I wanted to fine-tune my images with the packages I wanted, and minimize the memory usage and boot up time by not having to wait while the system probed for many non existent NICs, sound and video cards. Your mileage may vary, so if you decide to try the prebuilt images, and have some luck, please let me know via the spam resistant email shown at the bottom of this page and I will include your information here.

That leaves us with two choices that are really quite similar, Downloading the ThinSTATION software and installing it on your personal Linux PC, or using the web based TS-O-Matic to create and download the image files. The only real difference being the TS-O-Matic is more user friendly, so if you are not comfortable with the Linux command line, or maybe you're one of those unlucky souls that is stuck in the Windows world, creating the image files on you local Linux PC is not an option. In my experience there are many things that are not an option when you are ONLY using windows. But thats another story.

A brief overview of each method to help you decide which is best for you.
The TS-O-Matic is somewhat "wizard like", displaying a series of screens and asking you to remark out options that you know do not apply to your Netvista, and include options you may want like Firefox, or the e100 NIC module etc. It even gives you a chance to upload your own images for use as boot splash screens, just make sure they are sized correctly (1024x768). At the end of the process, you click the "Build" button and generate the CF image files. The build process only takes about 45 seconds, and you will have a chance to save your build files for possible future use as well as the image files. You can start over at any time, by either clicking the "Back" button or just starting over at the main page.

If you download the ThinSTATION software and build the image files on your local Linux PC, you will need to manually edit the build files, changing the options and including and excluding packages just as above. Once you've done that, you just run "./build" to build all the necessary files. After the build is complete, you will copy the files to you CF card, install the card, boot and test. It is very quick and easy to modify the files and build again. You can even make changes and re-build while the existing image is still booting up on the Netvista.

The choice is yours...
Easy of use and a splashy interface, or speed and flexibility of the command line interface. Seems like the same choices we make in many other things day after day. You should possibly use the TS-O-Matic site to create your first bootable image files, and then save them to be used locally. That was my approach, and it worked out well.

Download or create CF image:.

Now its time to create the actual files you will put on the CF card. I will separate this segment into two sections, TS-O-Matic, and Local PC.

TS-O-Matic
On the ThinSTATION main page select the TS-O-Matic Menu choice on the left. This will take you to the download page where you can choose a TS-O-Matic site location. I choose one of the three stable sites. I normally do not want to wrestle with the bugs in beta releases because I never know if it's me or the software having a bad day. Might as well eliminate as many problems as possible right up front. Once you pick a TS-O-Matic location, you will start the process, by clicking the "Start" button. At the top of the page you will be shown the step you're on (1 of 5 in this case). In the large scrolling text box, you are shown the contents on the "build.conf" file. This is the main configuration file for the ThinSTATION software. I have the "build.conf" file that I use with my Netvista right here. You can use it as a starting point by downloading the file (or copying and pasting into your favorite editor), then clicking the "browse" button on the ThinSTATION screen, locating my example file, and clicking the "Upload" button. The TS-O-Matic site will replace the generic build.conf file shown before with the version that you just uploaded. You will need to edit it as you see fit for your purposes. If you select additional packages, they will be included in your boot files automatically. More than likely you will need to edit the files and change the network parameters in the thinstation.conf.buildtime file, and possibly the screen resolution lines near the top to suit your environment. When you are done editing, click the "Save and Continue" button.

The next screen (2 of 5) is very similar, except that you are dealing with the other ThinSTATION configuration file , called "thinstation.conf.buildtime". Again I have my working "thinstation.conf.buildtime" file here. The process is the same also, download my working file, save it on your PC, upload it to the TS-O-Matic site, edit as you feel the need, and click "Save and Continue". In the next screen, (still step 2), you can specify any custom boot splash images you may want to include. There is a standard, splash screen, and a splash screen for the verbose boot information version. They can be the same, different or you can just continue without changing the defaults, your choice. Just make sure they are 1024x768. And just like the config files above, browse to each file, click the "Upload" button , followed by "Save and Continue".

Now we're at step 3, and the choices are easy. If you think you messed up, click the "Back" button to go back a step and try again, or click the "Build" button to build the image files.

After about 45 seconds, the screen will change, and you will be at step 4, and the log will show the included packages and options. Just click the "Continue" button to move on, or "Start Again" if you think you missed something.

In step 5, you should click and download two of the file choices, "build.conf" and "thinstatiion.conf.buildtime". You will want to save those modified versions as well as the boot files, and here's your chance, so download and save those two files now. We will be using Syslinux to boot our system, so click the "Syslinux" button. On the final screen you will see the four required boot files, They are shown below. Left click on each file name and save the files to a convenient location. I do not right-click and select "Save link as" because Firefox messes up the file extensions when I do that, These are the boot files we will put on the CF card in the next section.
ThinSTATION Boot Files

Local PC

If you decided to build the ThinSTATION boot files on your local PC, the first thing you need to do is to jump over to the ThinSTATION download site and get the software. Since version 2.2 is still in beta, I chose version 2.1.3. Here's a direct link to the software I would also suggest you get the Firefox package, Flash Package and XMMS from the v2.0 contrib area

Once you have all the files, move them to a suitable location like home/myname/thinstation. Then extract the "ThinSTATION-2.1.3.tar.gz" file with the command "tar -xzvf ThinSTATION-2.1.3.tar.gz" . This will create a ThinSTATION-2.1.3 directory within your current directory. Now move to the "ThinSTATION-2.1.3" directory and extract the other packages with "tar -xzvf ../packagename.tar.gz" note the leading "../" . Do this for each package you downloaded. This will extract them in the correct location to be included in the build. Now you will need a copy of my working build.conf file and my thinstation.conf.buildtime file. Click the links, and either copy and paste to your favorite editor and save, or use the links on the page to download the zip files. Put the files in the ThinSTATION-2.1.3 directory. More than likely you will need to edit the files and change the network parameters in the thinstation.conf.buildtime file, and possibly the screen resolution lines near the top to suit your environment. If you want to change the two boot splash screens, you will need to replace the default images in the "Thinstation-2.1.3/utils/boot" directory with images of your choosing. The image for the verbose boot background is called "bootsplash-1024x768.jpg" and the image for the normal (silent) boot background is called "silent-1024x768.jpg". Once you have saved these changes we can actually build the boot files.

While you're still in the ThinSTATION-2.1.3 directory, run the command "./build". You have to include the "./" to run build from the current directory. You will see a list of modules, packages and libraries scroll by as they're being built. If you see any error messages about missing files, pay attention to the name. You will either have to remark out that package, or download, and then untar the package and run the "./build" again. As things continue, you will see some information about the boot image sizes, and a message "Making boot image for nbi Type....". Finally, you will see the message "Build Complete!". This all means that you successfully created the boot files.

Make the CF card bootable:.

We have our files, but if we just place them on the CF card nothing will happen, the Netvista will not boot. We need to install a master boot record, and a bootloader. Again there are different approaches to this depending on whether you are doing this under Windows, or Linux. Pick the appropriate choice and continue below.

Writing the image under Windows:
If you're going to use Windows to write the image to the CF card, you must first download and unzip syslinux. This will install a master boot record and a bootloader. This set of programs can be found at the syslinux home page. The version I used was version 3.11 Save the zip file to any suitable location, and then unzip it into an easy to access location like C:\temp.

Before you plug the card reader in, we need to identify the disk drive (associated with the CF card) that we will be putting the image on. You can do this by making sure that your card reader is NOT plugged in, and then opening "My Computer" and looking for any removable disks. Unless you have a zip drive installed (or some other similar drive), you should not see any removable disk drives. Now, plug in your CF reader, and insert the CF card into it. Wait a few seconds for Windows to catch up, and then take note of any new removable drive icons. If you have a multi-slot card reader, you may see more than one drive icon appear. In this case you will have to identify the correct drive letter by double-clicking on each icon. If you have selected the correct icon, a new window will open showing you the contents of the CF card (if any exist). If it is not the correct drive icon, you will get a message to insert a disk in the drive. Continue double-clicking on each removable disk drive icon until you are sure which one represents your CF card. Now that you know the removable drive letter, lets erase any files that might be lingering on the CF card. The easiest way is just to format it. Do this by right-clicking on the drive icon, select "Format". In the dialog that opens up make sure that the capacity is approximately correct for your CF card size, so you don't accidentally format your hard drive. Make sure to select the "FAT" filesystem not FAT32 or NTFS, and click the "Start" button to format the card.

Now we will install the master boot record, and bootloader. Open a command window by clicking "Start/run" and typing "cmd" Change to the folder where you un-zipped syslinux, (c:\temp in this example) and then into the subfolder "win32".
Now write the MBR and bootloader to the card with one easy command:

syslinux -ma x:

Where x is the letter of your removable drive. This will complete in less than a second. When its done, close the command window. The CF card is now bootable, and we can move on to the next step.

Now it's time to put the ThinSTATION boot files on the CF card. Using windows explorer, browse to the location you saved the ThinSTATION boot files that you created with the build process to in the earlier steps. From here you can just drag and drop the four boot files to the CF card icon. Those four files are "syslinux.cfg", "thinstation.txt", "vmlinuz" and "initrd". Once the copy is complete, eject or stop the CF card by using the normal windows removable disk tools before unplugging the CF card. Made it this far? GOOD, we can now move on to installing the CF card in the Netvista and booting up.

Writing the image under Linux:
Once you're booted into Linux, login as root, and get to a command prompt, we will need to be root to use the various programs. Linux sees USB memory cards as SCSI disks, so before plugging in the CF card reader we want to verify any disks that may be already identified. Most PCs have IDE disks identified as /dev/hdx where the x is 0-3, so on most machines you will not see any disks identified as SCSI disks until you plug in your card reader and CF card.
Now, from the command prompt, lets see if there are already any SCSI drives identified. Enter "fdisk /dev/sda" and press [enter]. If you receive a message of "Unable to open /dev/sda7" then there is not a drive identified as /dev/sda. If instead you see a disk message about disk cylinders, booting, and a command prompt that says "Command (m for help):" then there is a disk already identified as /dev/sda. In that case, simply press "q" to quit without changing the partition table. Continue to use the fdisk command replacing the "a" with b,c and d (/dev/sda to /dev/sdd), making notes of any drives already identified, and their identifier(sda, sdb etc). Now, plug in your CF reader, insert the CF card into it, and wait a few seconds. Then repeat the "fdisk /dev/sda" through "fdisk /dev/sdd" process. You should now see a disk identified where it was not before. Make note of this drive designation.

Now that we know our CF cards disk identifier (lets say /dev/sda in this example), lets make it bootable. I will summarize the commands below, assuming that you have installed the ThinSTATION software in /home/myname/ThinSTATION-2.1.3, that you have also downloaded and uncompressed the "powertools" package into the packages folder per the instructions above. and that your CF card is identified as /dev/sda. If not, make the appropriate substitutions in the commands below.

These commands all assume you start the process in the "Thinstation-2.1.3" directory.

Format the CF card to remove any trace of existing files with the command "mkdosfs /dev/sda1"
change to the directory where syslinux is located with the command "cd packages/powertools/bin/"
Install the master boot records with the command "cat mbr.bin >/dev/sda"
Install the Syslinux bootloader with the command "./syslinux /dev/sda1" note the "./" and the "1" after /dev/sda
Make a directory to mount the CF card under with the command "mkdir /mnt/cfcard"
Mount the CF card with the command "mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/cfcard"
Change to the syslinux directory with the command "cd /home/myname/ThinSTATION-2.1.2/boot-images/syslinux/"
Copy the four ThinSTATION boot files with the commands:
"cp syslinux.cfg /mnt/cfcard"
"cp thinstation.txt /mnt/cfcard"
"cp vmlinuz /mnt/cfcard"
"cp initrd /mnt/cfcard"
Unmount the CF card with the command "umount /mnt/cfcard" note there is no "m" in umount

Wait for the umount command to return to the command prompt before removing the CF card from your reader.

Take the easy way out, download working boot image files:.

OK, if you really don't want to mess with all of this stuff, and your needs are similar to my needs listed above. You can just download a zip file containing the image files that I use, Make the CF card bootable and copy the four files in the zip file to the card and you're ready to go.

Installing the CF card:.

I have covered the CF card installation on the m0n0wall hardware installation page, so I wont go into detail here. If you want addition information on the card installation, just jump over to that page before continuing.

Boot and test:.

OK, you have the boot files written to the CF card, and the card is installed in the Netvista, all thats left is to power up and see what happens. Plug the power cord in, and flip the power switch on the rear to the "on" position. Check the power LED up front, if its on just be patient. If its off, press the white front power button. After about 15 seconds you should be greeted with your new ThinSTATION boot splash screen. You should probably press [ESC] or [f2] to change to the verbose boot screen. It will give you much more detail about what is going on. If you used my example config files, you will shortly see a shiny new ThinSTATION desktop, complete with Firefox, SSH client, shell prompt, XDM client, RDP client, VNC client and XMMS multimedia player. If you were not so lucky as to have it work on the first try, check the boot messages for things not getting loaded correctly. If it doesn't boot, re-read the section on creating the boot files, installing the MBR and syslinux. There are also some great troubleshooting documents on the ThinSTATION web site, including a FAQ, settings and HowTo's.

There is much much more to ThinSTATION than I have covered here, hopefully I've inspired you to check it out further. Also please consider donating to the project. As you can see there have been thousands of man hours invested in the development of this software. Lets support the developers if we like the results of their hard work!