Current version: 2.2.12

The flexVDI Live USB Client is a Linux distribution that boots from a USB pendrive, without the need for another operating system. Its purpose is to turn old computers and Thin Clients into flexVDI virtual desktop terminals, since it supports a wide range of harware with 32 and 64-bit Intel achitectures. Its main features are:

Distribution based on Porteus 3.2.2, with Linux kernel 4.9.
It works with BIOS and UEFI.
Installable on hard disks and MMC devices.
Up-to-date graphics drivers, for Intel, AMD and Nvidia cards.
Possibility of booting other computers in the same network with PXE.
Customizable design and configuration.
It fits into just 1GB.

Preparation

The flexVDI Live USB Client image that is available in the download section of the flexVDI web is ready to be written to a pendrive. Once downloaded, the write process will depend on the operating system you are working on. We show here two possibilities.

GNU/Linux

On this OS, the preferred and simplest method to write an image to a USB pendrive involves using the dd command. You must be root to run this command on a device file. There are GUI tools too, that simplify this process, like Gnome Multi-Writer, Etcher and Unetbootin.

But first you must identify the device file for your pendrive. Insert the pendrive in an available USB port. If your system notifies you of the new USB device, do not open it; the pendrive must not be mounted in order to be written. Open a terminal window and write the following command:

# lsblk -p

This command will show a list with the drives connected to the computer, their partitions and their size. Identify the device file that represents your pendrive with this information. Make sure that the field "MOUNTPOINT" has no value.

Once the device file has been identified (we will assume it is /dev/sdb from now on), write the following commands:

# zcat flexvdi-live-2.2.12-usb.img.gz | dd of=/dev/sdb bs=1M
# sync

When it finishes, you will have a bootable pendrive with flexVDI Live USB Client v2.2.12.

Windows

In Windows, the most famous tool to write images in USB pendrives is Rufus. Just make sure you check the "Create a bootable disk usgin: DD Image". Then, simply select the image file you downloaded and the USB pendrive, and press "Start". There is no problem in using a GZip-compressed image, Rufus will uncompress it on the fly.

Booting

Insert the pendrive in the computer where you want to run flexVDI Client, and turn it on. If your computer is not configured to boot from USB, you must change the configuration, or select the USB pendrive from the boot menu. This process depends on the firmware that is installed in your computer. flexVDI Live USB Client works with both BIOS and UEFI firmwares.

A boot menu with the flexVDI logo will appear. It contains two entries, for normal boot and fresh boot (no custom configuration). The fresh boot is only needed in exceptional situations. If nothing is selected, the system will boot in normal mode after 5 seconds.

After a short boot process, the client window will show:

Figura 1: Client interface after the first boot-up.

The look and functionalities of the client is similar to the flexVDI Client for GNU/Linux, so it won't be detailed here again.

At the top border, there is a panel with information and additional actions. From left to right:

A button to open a terminal window.
The list of open windows.
The network connection applet. It shows the current status and allows to connect to wired and WiFi networks.
If present, the battery status.
A clock with the date and time.

Installation

To install the client in the computer so that the USB pendrive is not needed anymore, use the installation program. To launch it, you must log in as root by either:

Opening a terminal window an running 'su -'; the default password is 'flexvdi'.
Or change to a text terminal with Ctrl+Alt+F1 and log in as root.

Then, run the installation program /root/install.sh. It expects the destination device file as argument. By default, it will try to install in /dev/mmcblk0 (if it exists) or in /dev/sda. Once the destination device is confirmed, the installation process will start.

Depending on whether the boot process from USB was done with BIOS or UEFI, the installation program sets the boot process from hard disk so that it is done in the same way. Beware that we have observed some UEFI systems that will not boot correctly once the installation process is finished. If you encounter this problem and your system is able to boot from BIOS too (usually referred to as "Legacy mode" in the UEFI configuration), try to repeat the installation process after booting from USB in this mode.

If you try to install the client on a disk that contains a previous versiont, the installation program will ask you if you want to keep the old custom configuration.

After a successful installation, remove the USB pendrive and restart your computer.

Customization

Since it is based on Porteus v3.2.2, the customization process of the flexVDI Live USB Client is similar. The root filesystem is mounted in memory and a set of base modules are loaded. Changes done to the filesystem afterwards are not saved to disk, and they are lost once the system is shut down. To persist these changes, they have to be written to a special directory in the data partition.

The distribution is divided in two partitions. The first one contains the boot files, the second one contains the base modules and the customization files, inside a directory named porteus. During the boot process, after loading the content of the base modules in the root filesystem, the files from the rootcopy subdirectory are copied. Any change that has to be applied on every reboot must be copied to this subdirectory. Any file in this directory is copied to the root filesystem, keeping its full path, owner and permissions, so the customization possibilities are endless.

Here we show some common customization examples, assuming that the data partition is /dev/sda2 (this and any other found partition are automatically mounted at /mnt on boot).

Customize the connection address

The flexVDI platform address where the client must connect to is stored in the configuration file .flexvdi/flexvdi-client.conf, in the guest user's home directory. By default, there is no configured address, and the client will ask for it every time, as shown in Figure 1:

flexvdi-client.conf

# flexVDI GNU/Linux client configuration
# Default value of each option is commented

# Configure this with the IP of your manager
# manager_ip =
...

So, in order to set a custom address, it must be stored in the file /mnt/sda2/porteus/rootcopy/home/guest/.flexvdi/flexvdi-client.conf:

flexvdi-client.conf

# flexVDI GNU/Linux client configuration
# Default value of each option is commented

# Configure this with the IP of your manager
manager_ip = flexvdi.mycompany.com
...

Select the sound devices by default

When there are many sound devices connected to the computer (sound cards with several inputs or outputs, HDMI ports, USB microphones, etc...), you must set which ones will be shared with the remote desktop. In this case, there is a program named setup-audio.sh that allows to configure them and automatically saves the changes in the rootcopy directory so that they persist the next reboot. This program must be run as root. An example of execution would be the following:

# setup-audio.sh

Available audio inputs:
-----------------------

1 Built-in Audio Analog Stereo
2 Yeti Stereo Microphone Analog Stereo

Select default input device [1-2]: 2

Available audio outputs:
------------------------

1 Built-in Audio Analog Stereo
2 Built-in Audio Digital Stereo (HDMI)
3 Yeti Stereo Microphone Analog Stereo

Select default output device [1-3]: 2
#

Configure the network

The network configuration is performed with the panel applet, next to the clock. Press the icon with the left mouse button and a menu with the available connections will show. Press it with the right mouse button and you will be able to modify them or add new ones. In any case, the configuration is stored in the directory /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections. So, to persist this configuration, you just have to copy the files in that directory to /mnt/sda2/porteus/rootcopy/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections.