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Network Station Manager (Thin Client Manager)source: http://lipas.uwasa.fi/~f76998/netstation/software/nsm-tcm/ Table of Contents
1. Requirements for booting a Network StationBooting a Network Station requires having its operating system files available on the local network in an NFS share. As a rough outline, you will need to:
The NFS server does not, strictly speaking, need to be in the local network. It could just as well be located on the other side of the planet. Still, you usually do not want to put it too far away. The slower the connection is between the NFS server and your Network Station, the longer it will (naturally) take for your Network Station to boot. What is more, the version of NFS protocol being used here is not a very secure—you would not want the data to travel through public networks unprotected if you only can avoid it. Configuring NFS to pass through firewalls can also be a bit of a pain. Pulling this all together, it is probably wiser to set up the NFS server in the local network. Supposing everything is neatly set up as described above, what is going to happen next? As you turn on the Network Station, the Boot Monitor will download the kernel from your NFS server. The kernel, in turn, will launch the rest of the boot process. (The rest of the boot process, too, relies on the NFS protocol and the exported files on the server.) But how do we get the Network Station kernel (and the other necessary operating system files) on our NFS server in the first place? 2. Obtaining the operating system filesThe operating system for the Network Station is not available as a separate download. Instead, it comes bundled within the same setup package as the corresponding version of IBM remote management tools. (These management tools are to be run on the server, and they are designed for centrally administering dozens of Network Stations.) The whole package is called IBM Network Station Manager, or, in the later versions, IBM Thin Client Manager, and it consists of the following main items:
Note: The Network Station operating system appears to be a proprietary, light-weight NetBSD distribution. I would gladly accept any more detailed information about the origins of this OS. Do I need to run the bundled management tools and daemons as well?The management tools are not required to get the Network Station running, but you will still need to download the whole setup package in order to actually obtain the operating system files—regardless of whether you actually intend to use the management tools or not. Should I run the management tools?It depends. Admittedly, the server-based configuration tools and daemons can make your life easier, especially if you have to manage a large number of Network Stations and users in your network. Still, just about everything can also be done manually—by editing text-based configuration files—so nothing in particular forces you to use the management toolkit. If running the management tools does not seem worth the hassle and overhead, you do not have to. More to the point, it may not often be possible to run the administrative tools because of their very specific platform requirements. If you do not have a suitable server and operating system for running the management tools, your only option is editing the configuration files manually. (This is likely to be the case in most hobbyist home networking environments. See below.) Platform requirements for running the management toolsIBM only provides Network Station Manager download packages for Windows NT 4 Server and Windows 2000 Server. (Pay attention here; specifically the "server" versions!) The setup package simply refuses to install on any "workstation" or "home" version of Windows—and at least the V2R1 setup package does not seem to work too well on Windows Server 2003, either. The other supported host systems are apparently OS/2, OS/400 (AS/400), OS/390, AIX, and SCO OpenServer/UnixWare. IBM, however, does not seem to provide downloadable setup packages for any of these; they are only available on a separate order. (Or rather, were available before the support was discontinued? I am not sure.) As implicated above, you are not forced to use the server-based management software if you do not want to. It is possible to extract just the Network Station operating system files from within the setup package and use them alone. What this essentially means is that even though the management tools have very specific platform requirements, you can serve the operating system for your Network Station on an ordinary home PC—running, for example, a lowly ”home” version of Windows (or, of course, any other operating system or platform which can provide an NFS server!) Two different versionsThere are two major releases of the Network Station operating system software and the corresponding remote management toolkit: V1R3 (Version 1, Release 3) and V2R1 (Version 2, Release 1). V1R3 vs. V2R1—which one is better?So, what is the difference between the two versions? This brochure on the IBM web site explains it quite well:
Unfortunately, while V2R1 is a newer and supposedly better version, it just might not be all that Series 300 friendly. See the description of "PTF 7" on this release note document: It would seem many of the V2R1 features are broken on a Series 300 Network Station. I have not yet tried V2R1 on my Network Station, so I cannot tell for sure. I would gladly add any experiences on this page if you have any. 3. Downloading, extracting, and installingNetwork Station Manager V1R3Note: As of now, these are only rough, skeletal instructions for installing the V1R3 operating system software on an NFS server (I have yet to get V2R1 working.) I will try to flesh out this section with more details in the future.
If everything is set up correctly, the Network Station should now download the kernel from the NFS server, decompress and launch it, then continue booting, finally ending up to a login screen. This login screen can be disabled by editing configuration files in the NFS-exported directory (and it apparently needs to be disabled if you are not running the IBM Network Station Manager software and the authentication services it provides on your server.) There are also some other settings that would need to be done in order to make the Network Station usable as an X terminal: for example, you need to allow connections from remote X clients. More information about the two above-mentioned configuration changes can be found from Linux Netstation HOWTO. You probably also need to configure xdm on the host machine to allow logins from the outside. (At least on my Debian system, xdm was not configured to allow this by default.) Operating System usage tips
Network Station Manager (Thin Client Manager) V2R1There are some quirks with this one:
Note: Installation requires either Windows 2000 Server or NT4 Server. The setup (partly) fails on a Windows 2003 Server. (This needs some further investigation.) I have managed to extract the "prodbase" files (the Network Station operating system) from the package, but have not had luck in getting the Network Station to actually boot into V2R1—yet. 4. Original IBM documentationAt this point it would probably be a fairly good idea to download and familiarize yourself with the Network Station Manager (or Thin Client Manager) documentation—even if you did not intend to use the actual management features at all—since these documents also detail the boot process and various features and configuration options of the actual Network Station operating system. 5. Screenshots
6. Related links
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