System information

Using Flash Cards with the Network Station
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the Flash card similar to CDROM from the administrator's and user's
perspective. This arrangement works well as long as the environment is
rather static and frequent updates are not required.
3.1.3 Separation of Servers, Authentication Login, and the Flash Card
Beginning in Release 3, the Network Station's NVRAM can be configured so
that the kernel is booted from one system, the configuration files are loaded
from another system, and user authentication is performed by a third system.
This capability allows a Network Station with Flash memory to be set up so
that it boots large, stable files from a Flash memory card and the more
volatile configuration files from a centrally-administered server.
User-specific information, such as configuration files, keyboard mapping files,
and browser preferences, cannot be easily accommodated on the Flash
memory media as there is no way to provide per-user authentication and
configuration. Because there is no local user identification and authentication
to the Network Station, a server must be in place to provide the correct user
specific environment setup such as the home directory, before completing the
full start-up of the Network Station.
This restriction does not apply to the case where the Network Station is
configured to merely load its operating system locally (using a Flash card)
and then transfer control to a server to load specific profiles and applications
based on user login. The ACTLogin functionality, combined with separation of
servers, enables the full start-up and user configuration of a Network Station
when utilizing the Flash memory boot option.
We recommend that separation of servers and ACTLogin be used in all Flash
card implementations. The recommended approach is to run Network Station
Manager (NSM) at the central or regional site to configure system-wide and
user-specific parameters. Then, ACTLogin is started from the Flash card and
is used to authenticate the user to the Network Station Manager database on
the central site. This results in very low network traffic while keeping the more
volatile user files and administration at the central site.
3.1.3.1 ACTLogin Description
The procedure for using Flash with ACTLogin is simple. First, the system and
user preferences are configured on the server system using the Network
Station Manager program. Then, the kernel and executable modules are
loaded on the Flash card. The configuration information is read from the
server and augmented by Flash-specific overrides.