tlug: SPARC-Linux Xterminal pkg - SLXT_0.5a

["John Little - SBI. Akasaka, Tokyo, Japan." <gaijin@example.com>]

   Here's something which might be of interest to all of the IPC owners
   out there (providing they have a network and at least one more machine
   to hand). It's a simple Xterminal package for SPARC-Linux machines.
   Just like Seth Robertson's "Xkernel", it runs only a cut-down kernel
   and the X-server process on the SPARC. It comes with installation and
   configuration scripts crafted (that sounds so much better than "thrown
   together", doesn't it?) for Red Hat Linux.

             http://www2.gol.com/gaijin/Linux/SLXT_0.5a.tar.gz

   See the README file at the end of this message for more details.

  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 | John Little - gaijin@example.com  |  Salomon Brothers Asia Ltd. Tokyo.  |
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          <STRONG>Just another Perl^H^H^H^H HTML hacker</STRONG>

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 $Id: README,v 1.1 1998/01/12 14:04:55 root Exp root $


Here's a late Christmas present for those people with IPCs, or other,
slow SPARC machines.

This SPARC-Linux Xterminal package allows a diskless, low-memory, SPARC
workstation to be used as an xterminal.  The concept is basically that of
Seth Robertson's "Xkernel", in that the workstation runs a cut-down, Unix
kernel and an X-server process, but very little else.  This configuration
enables low-end, limited-memory machines to run X-based applications at
a speed approaching that of the server.

It's *all* Linux! There are no Sun binaries or libraries involved at
all. The kernel and libraries are derived from the Red Hat 4.2 release
and are redistributed here under the terms of the GNU General Public
Licence (please see the file COPYING for details).

This is very much an alpha release and anyone using the package should
consider themselves a tester, rather than an end-user.  Bug reports and,
more importantly, fixes, are welcome, as are reports of other systems
and releases on which this package has been discovered to work.

The package should install as-is on Red Hat 4.* or 5.* systems and, I
think, Slackware systems.  Most other Linux systems should work "out of
the box" too, but I don't have any other machines to test with at the
moment.  You don't need to install SPARC-Linux Xterminal support on a
Linux system (I have run it on Solaris 2.5.1), but the install and
support scripts are biased very heavily towards Linux and you will most
likely end up doing manual install and configuration.

What do you need to run your SPARC as an Xterminal client?

- You must have your machine connected to a network on which there is at
least one other machine.  This second, "boot server" machine must have
a minimum of 7MB of free space available for the SPARC-Linux Xterminal
package, and should have a complete X11 tree.  It can be anything from a
standalone i386 Linux system upwards (although it obviously makes sense
to use a server which is more powerfull than the clients, especially
where multiple clients will be operating simultaneously).

- Your SPARCstation must have at least 12MB of main memory (it will
boot with 8MB, but will crash with "out of memory" errors as soon as
you start using applications).  In the same vein, because the client
machine only runs a Linux kernel and the X-server process, any more
than about 24MB of memory is a complete waste.

- Your SPARCstation does NOT need a disk.  There are no disk drivers
included in the kernel, so even if the machine has a hard disk
installed, it can not be accessed (this also means that it is quite
safe to use a diskfull system for testing).

- Your SPARCstation must have a frame-buffer, monitor and keyboard.


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