[TriLUG] Diskless w/s for legacy DOS app?

[Jason Tower]

1. if you only have two POS systems and want to keep it simple, don't have one 
windows/DOS system and one linux system.  go with two windows/DOS systems or 
two linux systems.

2. if people at the store have neither linux nor significant windows/DOS 
experience, then i'd say it doesn't make much difference which one is used.  
for my money, linux is far more stable and reliable, has superior remote 
administration capability, and is easier to backup and recover in event of 
disaster.

like i said, it sounds like an interesting challenge and i'd be happy to lend 
a hand if you wish.

jason

On Wednesday 13 November 2002 17:19, bp wrote:
> Jason Tower wrote:
> >because local port access is needed, the thin client approach may not be
> > the best (there are ways to access local ports with a thin client setup
> > but it's probably not worth the effort in this case, especially with
> > dosemu).  so we'll run the app locally on each workstation and use NFS to
> > tie them together for sharing the data, similar to using mapped drives
> > under DOS.  the trick is to avoid moving/breakable parts like hard
> > drives.  so instead of booting from a HD, set up the workstations with
> > network booting (etherboot, PXE, whatever) and load the OS that way. 
> > that should provide the best of both worlds - local running environment
> > for the DOS app, centralized data storage, and no moving parts on the
> > workstations.
> >
> >jason
>
> That sounds like a great solution if the number of POS systems was
> higher.  But I think that'd be missing the goal here.
>
> That goal was to increase the reliability of the POS systems without
> making it any more complicated.  For a store with 2 POS systems.
>
> No one there has any Linux understanding nor even a basic dos/windows
> education.  My original plan was to make the second slave POS system a
> diskless w/s with print capabilites and upgrade the master Windows
> system with new hd's using hw RAID to improve fault tolerence.  As much
> as I'd like the idea,  I don't think a linux-only shop idea would go
> over real big.  Somebody there or on the support line has to be able to
> get  at least one system backup quickly if something goes down.
>
> So, would dosemu access to LPT1 pretty much nix me from using a thin
> client scheme?
>
> -bp
>
>
>
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