rootninja

Use the following steps to get an image of a HP Thin Client running as a virtual machine in VirtualBox.

* I am running Fedora 11 and VirtualBox 3.0.0 r49315.
* The thin client is running a stripped down Debian Etchnhalf (no ‘less’ pager command, man pages?!)

Make the HP Thin Client image by booting from a usb stick and dd’ing the internal flash drive onto a usb stick.

* The drive in the HP is only a gig.

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbdisk -t vfat
dd if=/dev/hda of=/mnt/usbdisk/hpimage.hda.dd

Create a virtual machine at least the size of the dd image.

* I made mine 1.1 gig, any size will do as long as you can completely write out the dd image.

Use the following settings for the virtual machine:

OS Type : Debian
Base Memory : 384 MB
Processor(s): 1
Boot Order: CD/DVD-ROM, Hard Disk
VT-x/AMD-V : Enabled
Video Memory : 9 MB
3D Acceleration: Enabled
Network Adapter 1: Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop
Serial Ports : Disabled

anything extra is gravy…

Boot the virtual machine from CD/iso.

* You can use the same usb iso you used to boot the hardware thin client.

Write out the image.

* Mount your disk that contains the image, then write it out to the virtual hard drive.

mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usbdisk -t vfat
dd if=/mnt/usbdisk/hpimage.hda.dd of=/dev/sda

Mount and edit the virtual hard drive.

* Mount it somewhere and go edit boot/grub/menu.lst
* Change the timeout to some positive integer value. I used 5 seconds.
* Edit etc/sudoers and allow the appliance user to run all commands through sudo without a password.
* Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and replace the fglrx driver with the vesa driver for now, and remove the 2nd display definitions

Reboot

Now you can boot into the machine and get to the desktop. If you interrupt the booting process, you can go into a regular console, login as the appliance user, become root with sudo, and change all the passwords.

And now if you log in with root or another user, you’ll get to a full xfce desktop!