On Tue, 6 Dec 2016 08:01:26 -0600 Kent West <we...@acu.edu> wrote: > On Tue, Dec 6, 2016 at 1:45 AM, emetib <chadbra...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > kent, > > > > i just looked up quest k2000 and there is no mention of linux at all. > > > > are you looking at changing the whole system and putting linux on it? > > trying to have microsoft give a tftp linux image? > > > > > > The K2000 is a "System Deployment Appliance", originally developed by a > company named KACE, bought by Dell, and recently sold to Quest. > > It's basically for building/scripting and distributing computer images. > For example, you buy 100 new Dell computers for your company. You have a > standard Windows 10 image you've built, that has MS-Office and Firefox > and Chrome and Adobe Creative Cloud and company-emblazoned screen > savers, etc. You tell the K2000 to push this image to your 100 new > Dells and rename them and add them to the domain, and you're done. > > You can do the same for your new Macs, putting test lab images on the 10 > Macs headed to the testing lab, developer-friendly images for the 6 > coders, presentation-friendly images for the 4 classroom-podium Macs, > and the Solitaire-only image for the CEO's MacBook. Push a button; BAM! > The Macs are imaged and ready to be delivered. > > The K2000 has a PXE boot system built in, so that we can configure our > campus-wide DHCP server to feed the K2000's IP address to client > computers that are booted to the network; the K2000 then feeds a PXE > image of some sort to the client PC/Mac, which is typically a > stripped-down Windows BartPE-type image or a slim Mac OS X image, that > gives just enough functionality over the network to then run hardware > diags or disk partitioners or the imaging process. > > It's my understanding that the K2000, although not natively supporting > other OSes, can be made to boot pretty much any system image. But it > takes tinkering, and although I didn't expect there to be many > tinkerers in the world that had the tinkering skill-set to work with > both Debian NFS/remote booting and the K2000, I thought if any place > would have the expertise it would be debian-user. > > Just as a quick recap: I'm looking to have the K2000 offer a Debian > NFS/remote X session to Dell PCs when they netboot, so that I can > configure some library diskless read-only kiosks allowing library > patrons to run a web browser, maybe open a document editor, and print. > I could accomplish the Debian kiosk setup by installing on the local > drive, but then I'll have multiple machines to maintain, whereas a > netboot remote-NFS setup would be a configure-once-configure-everywhere > situation, and would remove the necessity of having and imaging the the > local drives. > > It's okay that no one here knows how; I knew it was a long shot, but > thought I'd ask. > > Thanks! >
I recommend you try the linuxquestions.org folks. If you ever get it working consider contributing how you did it. Perhaps at the linux documentation project (ldp). Sincerely, David
