Personally, while I've grown to enjoy the command line, I would suffer little sense of loss at no longer needing to use it in chroot development and maintenance. I like the idea that, as you set up and develop the capabilities of the server one is simultaneously accomplishing the same with the thin/fat client--very efficient and transparent.
The need to reboot the server into grub recovery mode is a limitation for my implementation. I manage the edubuntu servers remotely and in one case it is not physically accessible. Therefore I use terminal with ssh but even more use OpenNX to access the server. Sounds like everything would work great here except I don't see how I could do the grub screen step since this screen is not available to OpenNX--though is it via ssh? Do you see a work-around? Sounds like BTRFS snapshots will solve this but not sure of its timeline. Although with the lower server needs with the fatclient technology, I may be moving to having each classroom use a good desktop (the teachers) as the server and no longer use a full-blown server in a tech closet. Nice to have options. At the end of the summer/before the start of the school year I set up one 'golden server' then using clonezilla, clone that image to the other servers only needing to adjust a few network config files. How would this new system impact how I have been propagating the server? It seems you are saying that I could get LDAP authentication, Apache caching/filtering working on the server and then not have them running on the clients--is this like the opposite of localapps? Would I have to specify each application I don't want to run locally? I may need some guidance here. Let me know how I can support the internationalization or testing of this: it is continuing to move Ubuntu/LTSP in a highly practical direction. This will help me in my push to get Ubuntu/Edubuntu more into the mainstream of our school district--whenever you lower the entrance bar for a technology you make it a more welcoming, more accessible option. Thanks for your continued efforts, Alkis. Looking forward to seeing others' responses. David G On Apr 2, 2012, at 12:58 AM, Alkis Georgopoulos wrote: > Now that the ltsp-server and ltsp-client packages are allowed to be installed > simultaneously (LP: #950945), I thought of an extremely simple method to > install and maintain LTSP fat/thin computer labs that should be appealing to > certain setups like small school labs. > We'll probably start using it in Greek schools in a month, and I'd like to > ask the community for feedback on where this could lead to problems, and also > on whether there's interest in an internationalized version of the > "ltsp-server-pnp" package that we'll develop to automate this. > > The installation steps for this new method will be: > 1. Install your server normally with any DE you prefer (Gnome, KDE, XFCE, > LXDE...). Also install and configure on the server any applications that you > want to have in your thin/fat clients. > 2. Add the repository for the yet-to-be-developed ltsp-server-pnp package, > which automatically installs and configures ltsp-server, ltsp-client, > dnsmasq, PXE menus etc for you. > 3. Reboot your server and select "Recovery console" in the grub menu. From > the recovery menu that will appear, select "Generate LTSP image". This will > create the /opt/ltsp/images/i386.img NBD image, and it will need about 5-10 > minutes to complete, without requiring Internet connectivity. > > That's all, you can then boot your server normally and start your thin/fat > clients. If you need to "update your chroot" in the future, you just do any > changes you want directly on the server (add/remove apps or settings) and > follow step (3) again. > > Pros: > * Great simplicity. As you've seen, there's *no LTSP chroot involved*, so no > "ltsp-build-client" step, no "ltsp-chroot install packages" step, no > "manually transfer gconf mandatory settings to the chroot" step. > > Cons: > * Loss of flexibility. The server needs to be the same arch as the clients, > so you'll probably want the i386-pae kernel in your server. You can't even > have different packages installed in your server than in your thin/fat > clients. But you can still have e.g. apache, mysql, sshd etc installed on > your server and put them in the RM_SYSTEM_SERVICES lts.conf directive so that > they don't run in your clients. No, that doesn't put any additional RAM > overhead, your clients can still have as low as 128 MB RAM no matter how many > services you have installed on your server. And of course in bigger setups > you can use a separate server for NFS/apache/whatever, and only keep the > LTSP-related services in the server where ltsp-server-pnp runs. > * Security concerns. E.g. the clients will have the same sshd keys as your > server. But I think that in step (3) above, the security-sensitive data can > be regenerated or omitted. And of course /home, /srv, /opt, and user's > entries in /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow will be omitted too in the NBD image. > * Finally, your server needs to be rebooted to update the NBD image, so some > downtime is involved. This will be avoided in the future when BTRFS snapshots > will be available. > > Thoughts? And, does anyone care about an internationalized Ubuntu > Precise/Debian Wheezy package for this? > > -- > edubuntu-users mailing list > edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com > Modify settings or unsubscribe at: > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
