[Solved] Reinstall Issues - Dell Wyse Client

[superzer0]

(Long post incoming...)

Hi all --

First off, I'd like to tell you that Porteus Kiosk has been the perfect item to fill a gap for our needs -- which was to get away from an old RDS environment with 2003 Windows servers...ugh.

Anyway, a little about our setup:

I created a usb installer of 3.7.0 and installed that across all of our old Dell Wyse clients, writing directly to the 2GB hard drive that is located in each. During the wizard, I pointed each kiosk to the global/nested configuration on an internal web server, which allowed it to pull the config correctly, then I would go back and add the individual identifier at the bottom to and reboot the client so it would get its own unique host name, client id, and static IP information.

EVERYTHING WORKED PERFECTLY...

Until we had to re-IP our entire network -- and it was done semi-without warning, so I didn't get a chance to pre-load a new config onto the clients to update the wifi settings, kiosk_config setting, and IP settings.

Normally, it wouldn't be a big deal and I would just go around and reinstall the kiosk software and reconfigure each -- but the problem is, the thin clients will no longer boot to a thumb drive, even though the BIOS can see the drive, has it listed as the first boot device, and I've tried the same usb I had installed all of the kiosks with, and even tried making a new one, but neither will boot. I have a TINY SMIDGE of Linux knowledge/ability -- and through my research, looks as though it has something to do with the kernal and that I didn't have the option in my config to allow booting to external device, or something to that effect.

ANYWAY -- I was able to get around the issue by putting back the old SSID with the same password, changing my IP to that of the old internal webserver, hosting up the updated config on my computer, and then the kiosks were able to see the new config, reconfigure themselves, and connect to the new wifi with the new proper settings...

Well...all except about 7 of them, that is. For whatever reason, when I was doing some copy/pasting in updating the new config, I somehow added "hidden" carriage returns between some of the parameters in the individual configs for some of the kiosks -- meaning, since they stop reading at a blank line, they would only get part of the IP config and would miss out on the default gateway, which lead to me getting the "Gateway not setup" message on boot.

I was able to workaround this by creating a small DHCP scope for the SSID, which allowed the bad kiosks to finally (after an incredibly long amount of time sitting on with just the custom wallpaper...) open the homepage and connect.

I can connect to each of the kiosks via SSH, since that was part of the initial config, so I do have "backdoor access"...

My questions are:
1. Is there anything I can do to make it so I can just reinstall Porteus Kiosk on the thin clients?
2. Can I do some internal format via SSH or delete a specific file to force it to go through the setup wizard on the next reboot?
3. I know the FAQ says the config is encrypted, but is there anyway for me to force it to look somewhere new for a config using SSH?

I appreciate the assistance, and thank you again for a great product.

[fanthom]

Hello superzer0,

1) Please remaster the ISO and add 'boot_from_usb' flag to kernel options in /boot/isolinux/isolinux.cfg.
If that wont help then HD wipe is your only option.

2) You can boot any linux and wipe the hard drive using 'dd' utility or similar.

3) This is obviously not possible (security and system stability is more important for us than making admin's life easier).


Thanks

[superzer0]

Thank you, @fanthom.

Wiping the drive using a live USB version of Linux was the way to go.

I appreciate your assistance!