LTSP 5

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

So the last couple of days I set up and ran some tests on the Debian
install of LTSP v5. We've migrated from 4.0 through to 4.2 and now I'm
thinking that it's getting on time to go to 5.

I was really impressed with the installation. I'm _very_ impressed with
the new way of sharing root on a diskless thin. You really can't beat a
chrooted Debian for installation ease. I'm sitting here thinking that I
can get rid of the thick/thin's too. We have a few whose only purpose
is to run CUPS (browse-polled by the main print servers) for a
"must-have" local printer and to start a remote GDM session.

NBD is _amazing_. Way better than the 4.x methods for accessing local
devices and very much more polished compared to the old way.

And hoi-poloi! My client beeped! Getting sound running is a big plus for
me as we will use it as an incentive to move people from Windows, we
turn off the sound-cards in Windows. I know I could have had sound in
4.x, but I didn't feel like working out modules on a per machine basis
or compiling a monster kernel.

In v4.x it was standard practise for diskless this to just have a
minimal shared nfs root partition and then use XDMCP via (G|K|X)DM to
serve applications to the desktop from the application server. In 5,
with the chrooted partition, I should be able to serve applications off
of the local client, via the shared nfs chroot. I know that all the
dependencies/libraries and modules are taken care of because it's just
another Debian install including stock kernel modules.

I kind of like this approach and it allows me to move some of the
application load off of the server. I would end up with two application
installations on the same box, one for traditional XDMCP and the other
for the local nfs root on the thin client but that doesn't really
matter, some of our thins would have a hard time running Win2k.

Does anyone do this? Is it recommended or is it better to stay within
the XDMCP paradigm?

Cheers,
lance
- --
Lance Levsen,
Catprint Computing
Tel: (306) 493-2249
Cell: (306) 230-8783
Blog: http://www.catprint.ca/blog/
SaskBlogs: http://saskblogs.catprint.ca/
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFH6a4WWSOc2vLaecgRAje/AJ4o1Cn7G7nQZuq9xrx6fEh0WEuzfwCfZBkd
4LFQ8/TJtALvA0LLFL00dAs=
=b2KU
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Received on Tue Mar 25 20:00:14 2008