Using D-I as a ssh client
One of the udebs available for DebianInstaller is openssh-client-udeb which provides the functionality for doing ssh-actions to another host. So you can use d-i as a ssh terminal, e.g. in a class room.
The great trick is doing
anna-install openssh-client-udeb
in VT2 when d-i does known where to fetch the packages that are not in the initrd.
The make it more userfriendly, you can preseed it:
d-i preseed/early_command string echo anna-install openssh-client-udeb > /bin/getssh ; chmod +x /bin/getssh
so that you type at VT2 only getssh to get the extra udeb. ( on slow computers, those that you mostly likely use as a terminal, it will take some time before getssh is available )
So after the
getssh
users can do
ssh username@host
to connect to the ssh host.
P.S.
to my best knowledge does the [http://www.ltsp.org Linux Terminal Server Project] not support text-only SSH clients. --GSt