Minimal GUI build for Wyse thin client device

Archive SUSE Studio / Studio Express
1

Hi,

I am trying to build a minimal GUI image of SLED11sp3 that I can drop onto a Wyse thin client. I require a very basic config with the following apps:

Firefox
Novell Client (ldap authentication)
Teamviewer
Java
Adobe PDF reader
Libre Office (Calc and Writer)

I also need to customize various bits, like NTP, Browser Homepages, Novell Client Config etc. and basic/
generic video driver that supports 1024x768x16. No games, no bells and whistles …

So my question is how to do the customization before creating the image that I can copy to the flash on the thin client.
Any help will be appreciated.

Regards
John

2

Hi John,

These are the openSUSE forums, I think you’d better turn to
http://forums.suse.com for SLES/SLED specific help.

–

  • Athlon X6 3.6 GHz, 16 GB DDR3, 30 GB SSD, 3 TB of disks, GT540,
    openSUSE 12.2 x86_64 + KDE 4.10 + GNOME 3
  • ASUS A73SD, Intel + GT610M Optimus, 6 GB, 120 GB SSD, openSUSE 12.3

ANYTHING THAT CAN GO WRONG… WILL TEACH US

http://en.opensuse.org/User:Knurpht
http://nl.opensuse.org/Gebruiker:Knurpht

Knurpht’s Profile: http://forums.opensuse.org/member.php?userid=783
View this thread: http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php?t=489905

3

Knurpht,

See this related (eventually) thread:

http://forums.suse.com/showthread.php?t=3079

Good luck.

4

John,

A few ideas that may help…

First, SUSE Studio can probably a lot of this. Certainly starting with
nothing (minimal) and then adding the packages you desire (Firefox,
LibreOffice, maybe the Adobe PDF reader if you really need that over
okular (KDE) or evince (Gnome) or equivalent) should add any necessary
dependencies (X, etc.) for you. Other software may be a little harder,
but not impossible. SUSE Studio lets you upload your own files to be
installed and also setup scripts to be run on first-boot. As a result you
could upload the Novell Client RPMs and then set your first-boot script to
run those . The same likely applies if you need a non-shipping version of
Java (SLE comes with IBM Java, though some vendors require Sun (Oracle)
Java). Teamviewer, same idea. It may take a couple of tries to have a
perfect build that just plugs in anywhere, installs the default stuff,
adds your extra stuff, and then is done but I’ve done it with other
software and it has worked well. The more you can find in the
repositories the easier things are since installing RPMs from repositories
is trivial and doing so on your own is just a little bit of work.

When done you can choose any number of build types from SUSE Studio…
LiveCD, USB, Preload image, installation ISO… VMs directly (for
testing). Using the TestDrive feature (I"m not sure how familiar you are
with this, so covering some of the basics) can let you, without
downloading the full set of files taking gigabytes of space and a good
chunk of time, test the installation directly on the SUSE servers for up
to an hour (s of the last time I checked).

Good luck.