innovative companies that are beginning to implement these kinds of scenarios 

today.

Let us get back to Linux clients having local hard disk drives. For this kind of 

situation you can install Linux and use your preferred systems management tools 

(from Novell, Red Hat, IBM, or open source) to manage them. The installation 

can be fully automated with AutoYast, Kickstart, Debian FAI

4

 (Fully Automated 

Installation), etc.

Automated installation can also be achieved by designing a PXE boot installation 

method (maybe using the Linux Terminal Server project as a starting point) in 

combination with specialized 

initrd

 images. This innovative method has been 

used within the OpenLDAP controlled SuSE Smart Client framework at a large 

insurance company in Germany. Their architecture relies on synchronization 

(using rsync) of a master server with 230 branch servers that are being used as 

local boot and installation servers for their branch clients. 

A similar method using a highly specialized initrd adaptation has been 

implemented at another large insurance company in Germany. They use about 

4,500 laptop computers and another 2,000 stationary clients. Those clients are 

booted over the network (PXELinux

5

) and configured while booting the systems 

according to:

What hardware is detected (using Kudzu

6

 auto detection), but overriding; for 

example, screen resolution, since 1024x768 is a must for certain applications, 

even if the hardware could do better

How they are connected to the network (Olympic Token ring, ISDN, GPRS 

Option Card, Bluetooth Mobile phone)

System default login rights: Who you are and to which user group you belong 

to (meaning you have access to different applications, etc.)

All configuration data (/etc, configuration files in $HOME (for example, for 

Netscape, etc.), desktop profile data, etc.) is assembled during the boot process 

and written to memory, so that even if you get access to a hard drive on a system 

that was booted in this way you cannot tell which network this machine was 

connected to or who has been working with this Linux client. Stationary users 

have access to all applications via NFS, while mobile users (having a pre 

installed Linux system on their Thinkpads) get their applications rsynced during 

the boot process, so everybody has an up to date system at any time. Certain 

parts of the system are rsynced only when the network connectivity is big 

enough, for example, for a X11 server update. After booting you have 30 

seconds to log into the system with a Omnikey USB smart card reader and your 

4  

http://www.informatik.uni koeln.de/fai

5  

http://syslinux.zytor.com/pxe.php

6  

Red Hat Linux hardware probing library: 

http://rhlinux.redhat.com/kudzu

 Chapter 5. Migration best practices 

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