Wireless and Live CD

[swestberg]

Hi all,

I am a relative new Linux user, not a complete newb, but still cutting my teeth, trying to break my, and my company's dependence on proprietary software. One of the things we are working on is a VMware View deployment of VDI, with access to it being both internal and extended to the internet. We want to use the broker to set up connections for remote users to connect to a virtual workstation, and in many cases, this connection will be coming from a user's personal home PC, in others it will be a company provided PC that will connect to their local network at home. However, I want to avoid putting a full OS distribution on these PC's, and obviously will have little control over the personally owned equipment. As such, I would love to create a Live CD that would boot their PC, login automatically to the local system, and launch the VMware VDI Client broker. I obviously want to secure the Live image down to only that which is needed to do this, no web browser, configure firewall for only those ports needed, etc.; however, what I am struggling with is how to handle wireless configuration, and printers on those PC's. While we could build individual CD's to give out to each user, that can quickly become a nightmare to manage. Enforcing a common configuration for wireless security and printer models would also be a challenge, and is not really possible. Most of these users are contract employee's, and not technical, so I need to have an easy way (if possible) for this to work for them.

Our biggest goals are to-

1. Give the users a common working environment
2. Increase productivity by having them work on devices on a network local to the services being accessed
3. Increase security of connection (secure OS on boot cd, application specific tunnel, proper firewall config on connecting device, then the VM connected to is controlled/maintained by internal IT staff, etc.)
4. Ability to deploy to multiple PC makes/models
5. Allow for the re-use of older corporate assets that would normally be disposed of
6. Ease of use for end users to include set it once wireless and printer configuration

It is the last item I am most struggling with how to do at the present time. Since it is a bootable CD, how can this configuration information be saved? I have thought of mounting the local C drive, but want to avoid that at all costs. Can this be put onto a thumbdrive? This is a less than ideal solution, but one that could be workable. Or am I just being dense and missing something obvious?

Thanks in advance for assistance,

Scott

[reed9]

It is the last item I am most struggling with how to do at the present time. Since it is a bootable CD, how can this configuration information be saved?

The easiest way is to install to USB drives, so you can store persistent settings on the same media that holds the distro. Otherwise, with a Live CD, you can either save persistent settings on the users harddrive, or an external drive of some sort, again USB flash drive probably being the most convenient.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD/Persistence

[Rubberman]

The easiest way is to install to USB drives, so you can store persistent settings on the same media that holds the distro. Otherwise, with a Live CD, you can either save persistent settings on the users harddrive, or an external drive of some sort, again USB flash drive probably being the most convenient.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD/Persistence

This is a good idea, given that a bootable USB thumb drive big enough to hold just about any Linux distribution (2-4gb) can be had for well under $10 USD.