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Copyright © 2003 by ShaoLin Microsystems Limited
ShaoLin Microsystems Ltd. reserves all the rights of this document.
All trademarks are owned by the corresponding trademark owner.
ShaoLin Aptus is a Linux workstation management system. Client workstations able to boot remotely from network using Etherboot or standard PXE boot ROMs from a Aptus server. Different from Thin Clients, Aptus Fit Clients are real clients which all client's file system resides at server but works like a normal PC. All processes include the full operating system runs at the client CPU, this have much better hardware peripheral support, performance and scalability over traditional thin clients or X-terminals.
Aptus clients requires no operating systems installation by using special file systems technology "Intelligent Union Architecture" (IUA) and network file systems(NFS), enable sharing a single copy of operating systems from the Aptus server. Provided your PC is a Pentium class PC, there is no restriction on similarity of hardware configuration between clients nor the server. That means you can share a single copy of operating system from the server among multiple mixture of client PC's. Ongoing system administration is needed only at the centralize Aptus server instead of individual client management. Since file system of the server is transparently shared by the clients, software installation and upgrade at the server will automatically see by all clients without the need of any special technique or tools.
One year from the previous version of Aptus 1.0, ShaoLin Aptus 2.0 has a new web-based administration interface which integrated with the well known Webmin server. Linux client management is now point and click, no longer need to manually type-in and copy MAC addressed from client NICs.
With the help of IUA, configuration files duplication is minimized by sharing a real single root file system, without the need to build a separate root file system for each Aptus clients and group Aptus clients. The use of rootfs-templates makes porting Aptus to different distribution much easier, enable this version of Aptus to support many Linux distributions.
Since Aptus 2.0.6, an enhanced Aptus 2.0 Professional Edition is developed which equipped with the ShaoLin innovative file system technology Cogo File System, which is a compression file system technology aims to even further extends the scalability and network performance for the Aptus environment. Administrators using the Professional Edition even further improves management and system administration by allowing them to remote monitor, control, send simple messages to communicate with users, shutdown or restart of Aptus clients.
PXE boot are now supported, this means administrators no longer need to create boot floppies or burn TCP/IP boot ROMs for most of the new PCs.
New features
Added support for Redhat Enterprise Linux 3
New Aptus client kernel 2.4.23
Problems fixed
Fix multi-login check problem
UI improvements, filename checking in Aptus configurator
Rootfs template updates
New features
Added support for Mandrake 9.2 and SuSE 9.0 .
User able to restart X of Aptus clients under Aptus Configurator X configuration page.
Problems fixed
Fix Aptus PXE boot image size limit.
Aptus client support for Intel EtherExpress Pro1000 driver.
New features
New client kernel 2.4.21, support supermount and new ALSA driver.
Problems fixed
Fix a memory problem on Aptus client daemon.
New features
Added support for SuSE 8.2 .
Improved client startup time on Redhat distributions . Display manager is now started much earlier rather than last.
Relocate the Aptus server root from /aptus to /var/opt/aptus to compliance with LSB specification.
Problems fixed
Fix a vulnerable bug in aptusd for PXE client requests .
Reduced CPU time consumption of aptusd .
Fix incorrect login time display under Client Monitor in Aptus Configurator.
New features
Added support for Redhat 9, Mandrake 9.1 .
Performance improvement of Union File System. Double up page cache hit rate, much faster on file open path.
Problems fixed
Fix a problem when removing a group in Aptus Configurator which didn't clean up the unionfs tables.
Fix an unresolved symbol problem in the Aptus client kernel nfs module.
Fix a lock up problem in client initialization due to the delay of full-duplex fast Ethernet requires a long delay on auto negotiation with some network switches.
New features
Aptus Configurator and Aptus client control tools have updated to have graphical view of Aptus client CPU, memory and swap usage.
New features
Added support for United Linux 1.0
Aptus client kernel has upgraded to 2.4.19-3APTUS, added with ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) support and Netraverse Win4Lin support.
Union File System has ported to support union two physical file systems, bug fixes and performance improvements. UnionFS is now started by using System V init instead of fstab.
Aptus server daemon is now added support for PXE clients, a new PXE loader has been developed to support the NBI boot image format.
Easier kernel selection. Aptus client kernels are now consolidated to a single kernel image. A network controller detector is added to the initrd of Aptus client kernels to load the suitable kernel modules for client.
Aptus Configurator has updated to view individual client on-line/offline status by host icons. Support for remotely restart-X of Aptus clients (Professional Edition Only).
Problems Fixed
Aptus Configurator added an async to the NFS export file to accommodate the new nfs-utils which uses sync by default.
New features
Added the aptusclient-nfsutils package to enable nfs lock support to /var/lib.
Added support for Redhat Linux 8.0 and Mandrake 9.0 .
New features
A new package aptusclient-nfsutils is added to better support for NFS locking on Aptus clients.
Aptus Configurator has added support for Aptus Professional Edition, able to remote control Aptus clients with the aid of Aptus client control tools.
Problems fixed
Bug fix to Union File System, cache coherency fixes.
Updated rootfs-template to union /var/lib such that rpm -q and data at the /var/lib can be shared with Aptus clients.
New features
Bug fix to Aptus server daemon to not reply DHCP clients if no DHCP IP address range is defined, this enables Aptus to co-exists with other DHCP servers in the same LAN.
Pentium class processor. Suggest 166MHz or above. Varies from requirement of Linux distributions, see the Section called Supported Linux distributions.
64MB RAM or more on server, 64MB RAM or more on client. Varies from requirement of Linux distributions, see the Section called Supported Linux distributions.
Must have at least 1 Ethernet adapter at both client and server connecting to a LAN.
/ 30MB (minimum, see notes below)
/tftpboot 2.8MB
/usr 54MB
/var 10MB (minimum, see notes below)
/opt/aptus 13MB
Chinese 2000 1.0
Redhat 7.2, 7.3, 8.0, 9, Enterprise Linux 3
SuSe 8.1, 8.2, 9.0, Enterprise Server 8
United Linux 1.0 based distributions
Mandrake 8.2, 9.0, 9.1 and 9.2
Thiz Server 6.0
Please contact ShaoLin Microsystems if you cannot find your OS in the above list, or please check for the latest Aptus package.
All stock vendor kernels and updated kernels in which a configuration of i586. i686, Athlon, i686-smp, Athlon-smp listed in the supported distributions section will be supported.
Download a suitlable installer file and execute the installer by using sh the-aptus-installer or obtain the ShaoLin Aptus 2.0 media, mount the media and execute the installation script /mnt/cdrom/install.sh to install the software. For details and step-by-step installation and configuration of ShaoLin Aptus 2.0, please refer to the ShaoLin Aptus 2.0 Installation and Operations Guide.
Aptus Configurator 2.0.12
Unionfs 1.5.3
Aptus Server 2.0.12
Aptus Client Kernel 2.4.23-3APTUS
Aptus Client add-on modules 2.0.12
Aptus Client NFS utilities 1.0.1-3
Aptus Root File System Templates 2.0.22
Aptus Client control tools 2.0.12 (Professional edition only)
Aptus Client Cogo File System 1.0.7 (Professional Edition only)
Cogo File System 1.0.7 (Professional Edition only)