remote mol-sessions with X-windows or vnc.

[Peter Åstrand]

Andy Baxter wrote:

> Can anyone help me with some information about using Mac-on-linux to  
> run remote displays on a number of machines over a network?

We have tried this idea. We used a setup like this:

vncviewer -- Xvnc -- MOL

The clients were running vncviewer. Xvnc was running on an Intel Linux 
server. The MOL:s were running on a Mac with Mandrake Linux. MacOS X 
1.0.1 was running in MOL.

The performance was OK. The largest problem so far seems to be how to 
handle many MOL sessions on the same machine:

1) Each MOL must use a separate partition or image file to load MacOS. 
It might be feasible to let each user have their own 1GB image file in 
their home directory, but it would be *much* nicer if the copy-on-write 
functionality (earlier discussed on this mailing list) could be brought 
back to life.

2) MOL seems to have some kind of "session number" concept, which I 
don't really understand. If this needs to be some kind of unique 
integer, perhaps the DISPLAY variable could do.

3) I've noticed that the MOL processes are running as root, which scares 
me a bit. It also means that the users cannot kill their own sessions.

Any ideas of how to solve these problems? Samuel, is this just a totally 
crazy idea? :-)

-- 
Peter Åstrand 		OpenSource-based Thin Client Technology
Cendio Systems 		www.thinlinc.com
Teknikringen 3		Phone: +46-13-21 46 00
58330 Linköping, Sweden