The Answer Gang

internet cafe

From gianni palermo

Answered By Heather Stern, Huibert Alblas

Dear sir,

please send me through email on how to setup an internet cafe in detail using red hat linux and windows nt cause I am planning to setup one. I got some tips from my friends but I want to consult a professional like you. hoping yuo'll send me the details. thank you sir...
Gianni Palermo

[Heather] We've had this question asked of us a few times before. I even popped it into the "Help Wanted" section in Issue 61: http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue61/lg_mail61.html

...but nobody gave us any hints beyond what I had there. Maybe you can get away with very minimal services, like running all the stations from CD-based Linux distros. There are a bunch of them listed at LWN but some of them or more of a giant rescue disc than a usable system. You might try these:

Knoppix

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix

RunOnCD

http://my.netian.com/~cgchoi

DemoLinux

http://www.demolinux.org

Virtual Linux

http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtual-linux

...or only offering web access:

Public Web Browser mini-HOWTO

http://www.chuvakin.org/kiodoc/Public-Web-Browser.html

If you want to get more serious you'll need to look harder. Sadly Coffeenet was forced out of business by his landlord, so you can't get his codebase easily (besides, it would be a moderately ancient Linux by now). Since VA Linux is now going into the consultancy and software biz instead of hardware, maybe you can buy some of their E-mail Garden expertise.

Of course you wanted to know where to get started. So I'll give you a bunch of pointers, but for the rest you'll have to do your own homework. If you really want to you could start up an "Internet Coffee House HOWTO" and add it to the LDP. I'd sure enjoy pointing to it if it existed.

There are other important points beyond merely the technical setup to consider but I'll have to assume you're making business plans and selecting a good location on your own.

Here's what seem to be the most helpful HOWTOs right now for the topic. Most of them are also available at the Linux Documentation Project home page.

For being diskless, if you want to go that route:

Diskless HOWTO

http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Diskless-HOWTO.html

Thinclient HOWTO

http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Thinclient-HOWTO.html

Network Boot HOWTO

http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Network-boot-HOWTO/index.html

KIosk HOWTO

http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Kiosk-HOWTO.html

Getting the connection going:

ISP Setup RedHat HOWTO

http://www.chuvakin.org/ispdoc/ISP-Setup-RedHat.html

Domain mini-HOWTO

http://caliban.physics.utoronto.ca/neufeld/Domain.HOWTO

DSL HOWTO

http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/DSL-HOWTO/index.html

DSL HOWTO "prerelease version"

http://feenix.burgiss.net/ldp/adsl

DHCP mini-HOWTO

http://www.oswg.org/oswg-nightly/oswg/en_US.ISO_8859-1/articles/DHCP/DHCP.html

Protecting yourself from abuse:

The Bandwidth Limiting HOWTO

http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Bandwidth-Limiting-HOWTO/index.html

Security HOWTO

http://www.linuxsecurity.com/Security-HOWTO

Advocacy HOWTO

http://www.datasync.com/~rogerspl/Advocacy-HOWTO.html

Maybe some things that might make your stations more attractive:

Sound HOWTO

http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Sound-HOWTO/index.html

XFree86 Touchscreen HOWTO

http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/XFree86-Touch-Screen-HOWTO.html

Printing HOWTO

http://www.linuxprinting.org/howto

Last, but certainly not least:

Coffee HOWTO http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Coffee.html

It's a lot to read, but I hope that helps!

[Halb] Ok, I don't know if this is exactly what you mean, but try: http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/src/kiosk/

Its description:

Its not using WinNT, but looks like you don't need to...

Have fun:
Halb

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Published in issue 70 of Linux Gazette September 2001

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