Hi folks,
I have repeated some of the tests I did with Debian Edu v11 the other day. It
has been suggested, that I should repeat those tests with the current test
version of Debian Edu.
These are my findings:
I have set up a new server using debian-edu-12.5.0-amd64-BD-1.iso.
I was a little surprised how fundamental the changes are compared to my old
Debian Edu based on Buster. The old system had its up and downs but it was
actually working rather well for us.
According to the manual the client is built automatically. I can confirm this
and in my case client data is built in /srv/ltsp/x2go-bare-amd64. The PXE menu
remains rather empty though, e.g. not a single LTSP entry is added.
Btw, the PXE menu now really looks ugly compared to what we had in earlier
versions of Debian Edu. Anyway, this is just cosmetics.
Consequently I decided to build the clients afresh using the following command:
debian-edu-ltsp-install --diskless_workstation yes --thin_type bare
The update failed during the process of creating the thin client and the errors
were nicely listed in /srv/ltsp/x2go-bare-amd64/debootstrap/debootstrap.log.
The errors listed didn't make much sense to me and smelled like bugs to me. I
decided consequently to delete /srv/ltsp/x2go-bare-amd64/ and start the whole
build afresh instead of updating it.
This worked just fine and the PXE menu showed the following 3 entries:
1. Plain X2Go Thin Client (64-Bit)
2. Diskless Workstation (64-Bit, server's SqashFS image)
3. Plain X2Go Thin Client (64-Bit, NFS rootfs)
So far I could not find out the difference between entry 1 and 3. They may
actually point to the same image. I didn't check that yet.
I have various clients at my disposal. "diskless workstation" works just fine
for newer hardware but my older Toughbooks no longer boot and I'm getting the
following message:
This Kernel requires an x86-64 CPU, but only detected an i686 CPU. Unable to
boot - please use a kernel appropriate for your CPU.
AFAIK this could rather easily be fixed in earlier versions of Debian Edu, e.g.
by simply creating a i386-chroot, which then worked just fine. Alternatively
the server could be build using the i386 version.
"thin client" works just fine on newer hardware. On my Toughbooks it also fails
with the same message as above. "thin client" is still rather mysterious to me.
I'm now getting a somehow strange looking screen dividing login screen instead
of the old full screen login which basically looked just the same as the
"diskless" one. Anyway, I didn't find time to do more tests. There are issues
however updating screen changes. Some parts fail to update and only do so when
hover with the mouse over that area.
To make my computer lab run with older Toughbooks is important to us.
That's all I have for now. Thanks in advance for some input on the issues.
Kind regards,
Roman
