Physical Client

Physical client mode is preferred way of launching GIS.lab client, because it provides best performance. It will run GIS.lab client session on client machine instead of original operating system installed (if any) on hard drive. Original operating system and local data will stay untouched and will be ready to run again after GIS.lab client is shut down.

To run physical client, it is required to connect machine running GIS.lab server and client machines via Gigabit switch and cables (CAT 5e or higher).

PXE boot

PXE boot is a default boot mode for GIS.lab clients. Booting from PXE requires to instruct client machine to boot from other device as it is usually doing so. On newer computers it is also required to disable Secure boot and/or enable Legacy Mode.

There are multiple possibilities how to instruct client machine to boot from PXE:

• press some F-key (depends on vendor) at machine start which will temporary instruct machine to boot from PXE
• press some F-key (depends on vendor) at machine start to launch boot manager, choose PXE or PCI LAN in boot menu to boot from PXE
• set PXE or LAN as first boot device in BIOS configuration, save and restart machine to boot from PXE

Here is an example procedure of enabling PXE boot for Lenovo ThinkPad

• boot up computer
• press F2 -> press Enter -> press F1. This should take you to the BIOS screen. Select Security -> select Secure Boot -> set to Disable -> select Start Up -> select UEFI/Legacy Boot -> set to Legacy Only -> press F10
• once you press F10, reboot then press F12. You should now be at the boot menu. Select PCI LAN. Press Enter

HTTP boot

In addition to default PXE boot method, GIS.lab clients can boot also directly from GIS.lab server using HTTP boot method. Here are some advantages over PXE which are valid for physical clients:

• it allows to manually choose target GIS.lab server which is very handy if multiple GIS.lab instances are running in one network
• on some machines it is easier to boot from HTTP (which is actually done by booting from USB stick) than to setup PXE boot
• boot process is faster

To enable HTTP boot, it is needed to create bootable USB stick from special ISO image, which exists in http-boot directory.

Insert free USB stick in to your Linux workstation machine, if it is automatically mounted, unmount it. Run dmesg command to detect device assigned to your USB stick by operating system (it should be something like /dev/sd[x]).

Unpack ISO image and burn it to your USB stick. Be careful to choose correct output device without a partition number.

$ gunzip -c ./gislab-client-loader.iso.gz > ./gislab-client-loader.iso
$ sudo dd if=./gislab-client-loader.iso of=/dev/sd[x]

Insert prepared USB stick in to client machine and instruct it to boot from it.

Enabling client machine

By default, no client machines are allowed to boot from server. To allow client machine, run following command on server:

$ gislab-machines -a "<MAC address>"

Tip:
Good way to collect MAC addresses of client machines, is to simply let them try to boot and than run following command to get list of denied MAC addresses on server.

$ sudo grep -e 'DHCPDISCOVER.*no free leases' /var/log/syslog

Continue with GIS Project Creation.