Thin Client Development

PC Xperience, Inc. is pleased to announce the release of our LTSP Enhancements package.

Our LTSP Enhancements package has the following features:

Makes the LTSP installation LDAP aware!
Uses Perl to simplify the programming of the LDAP integration and workstation startup sequence. (We have optimized our program(s) to run as fast as possible and only when absolutely necessary for performance reasons on 486's on down.)
Uses the MAC address of the workstation as the uniqueness value instead of the workstation hostname. This allows us to implement Dynamic DNS!
Dynamic DNS is implemented via a Daemon that receives the workstation hostname and it's IP address and then generates the commands to issue to the DNS Server.
Migration path from lts.conf to lts.conf and LDAP implemented. lts.conf is still required to indicate the LDAP info for the workstation. Once all items ([Default] and workstation specific) are in LDAP, then LDAP is the preferred location to gather configuration settings from.
Auto-Configuration created in rc.local so that a workstation can be plugged into the network and configured and immediately used on the initial bootup (as long as the correct kernel is supplied, etc.) This only works with LDAP enabled; otherwise, [Default] settings will be used.
Swapping over NFS implemented in rc.local and in the Auto-Configuration. Just have the module available for your kernel and the necessary share point created and rc.local along with the correct LDAP or lts.conf settings will create and use NFS Swapping immediately and transparently!
Web Based administration tool for the LDAP settings.
NEW: Screenshots of the Web Configurator
You Don't have to use LDAP if you don't want to!!! Just modify your lts.conf workstation sections to be the MAC address of the workstation and add the WORKSTATION_NAME attribute and then you can take advantage of Dynamic DNS and Swapping over NFS in the way we have implemented them!

NEW: Design Draft for new thin client configuration [ HTML ]
NEW: Design Draft for dhcpadmin program [ HTML ]

ltsp_initrd-20010416.tar.gz (Size: ~2MB)- a test configuration that allows LTSP to use an initial ramdisk for read-write filesystem benefits. It includes a kernel (v2.4.3 with support for devfs and NFS swapping), an initial ramdisk, and the devfsd daemon program (v1.3.11). The following simple modifications are necessary:

In /etc/dhcpd.conf or /etc/bootptab, make sure the root-path option is set to point to the correct NFS root filesystem path. The DHCP client, run from the initial ramdisk, passes this option to the /linuxrc script to mount the root NFS filesystem. If this option is not set, the default path of <DHCP_SERVER_IP>:/tftpboot/lts/ltsroot will be used for the root NFS filesystem path to mount.

In the root filesystem for LTSP, make a directory called .../ltsroot/oldroot. I.e.,
```
mkdir /tftpboot/lts/ltsroot/oldroot
```
. This directory is used to pivot the initial ramdisk root filesystem onto when changing the root directory from the initial ramdisk to the NFS read-only filesystem mount point.

Copy the supplied devfsd statically linked executable to .../ltsroot/ltsbin.

If you use DHCP, set one (or all) of your clients to use the new kernel and ramdisk.

If you use Etherboot, you will need to run mknbi-linux on the supplied kernel (v2.4.3 with NFS swapping support) and add the initial ramdisk to the end of the command line to have it tacked onto the end of the Etherboot image.
mknbi-linux --output=/tftpboot/lts/vmlinuz-2.4.3.all --append="root=/dev/rd/0 init=/linuxrc" bzImage-2.4.3-nfs ltsp_initrd.gz
If you use PXE (pxelinux), you will need to modify the configuration files to include passing an initrd=<path_to_initrd>/ltsp_initrd.gz to the kernel parameters the client uses to boot. You will also need to specify that init=/linuxrc.

Rebuild the getltscfg statically. Do this by modifying the Makefile to compile the getltscfg executable with the -static option. Then, copy this executable to /tftpboot/lts/ltsroot/ltsbin, overwriting the dynamically linked version that is normally distributed with LTSP.

xconfig-20010427.tar.gz (Size: ~5KB)- this package contains a console application to allow workstations to run X configuration tools locally in order to facilitate setting up X on a thin-client; this tool can be used while the machine is running to reconfigure X, and it can also copy the generated X configuration file to the server (using scp).

Downloadable Software!
This software is mirrored at LTSP.org (Which is the preferred download site)

LTSP Enhancements 1.3

Core - Just the files we created/modified.

Core - Version 1.3 ~ 292KB

Full - The Core plus our /ltsroot directory which can be used to kickstart your installation.

(Please don't download between 8am and 5:30pm CST as our bandwidth is limited)

Full - Version 1.3 ~ 10.8MB (See Update - Version 1.3 for details of what changed.)

Update - Will bring a Core or Full installation to the specified version.

Update - Version 1.3 ~ 60KB (The Web Configurator now has the ability to assign tweaked X modes to each workstation individually. X modelines can be dynamically generated by inputting the desired vertical refresh rate or dot clock frequency, the resolution, and any necessary flags and then clicking a button. X modelines can be assigned to the Default section in LDAP to allow them to be used with all workstations if needed.
NOTE: This feature only works with LDAP configured.)

LTSP Enhancements 1.4

Full - The Core plus our /ltsroot directory which can be used to kickstart your installation.

Full - Version 1.4 ~ 9.4MB (Now has support for modules and remote sound using the Esound daemon.)

NEW: VNC X session

vnc-X-session-20010321.tar.gz ~ 660KB (This package contains the Xvnc and vncviewer files already patched for the TightVNC enhancement 1.1p9, but otherwise, all the files are the same as those contained in the release below, except the README which only indicates the patch changing from 1.1p5 to 1.1p9. VNC 3.3.3r2 is still required to be installed before installing this package.)

vnc-X-session-20001111-base.tar.gz ~ 20KB (This package has been modified to use the new Tight Encoding enhancements to VNC 3.3.3r2. VNC 3.3.3r2 is required before being able to use this package. The Tight Encoding enhancements to VNC can be found at the VNC Tight Encoder page.)

vnc-X-session-20001121.tar.gz ~ 660KB (This package contains the Xvnc and vncviewer files already patched for the Tight Encoder enhancement 1.1p5, but otherwise, all the files are the same as those contained in the release above, except the README which only indicates the patch changing from 1.1p4 to 1.1p5.)

vnc-X-session-20000830.tar.gz ~ 20KB (This package allows users to switch to using VNC as their X session. It now has support for local VNC sessions as well as LTSP incorporation for VNC workstations. VNC 3.3.3r1 is required before being able to use this package.)

LTSP Enhancements Documentation online

Known Issues

Future Plans

Comments, questions e-mail us.