CLUG TALK

Linux Terminal Server Project

Tuesday, 25 JAN 2005

Jonathan Carter

What is LTSP?

Linux Terminal Server Project

Founded by James McQuillan

Designed to reduce I.T. spending

Workstations are diskless thin clients

LTSP requires a minimum of 1 server

Website: http://www.ltsp.org

Wiki: http://wiki.ltsp.org

ISO: http://www.ltsp.org/ltsp-iso-4.1.html

LTSP Topology

LTSP Server

Powerful CPU.

100MBRAM per thin client

Gigabit Network Card Recommended

Contains LTSP Base system

Switch

Low-cost

thin client computer

Low-cost

thin client computer

Low-cost

thin client computer

Low-cost

thin client computer

Low-cost

thin client computer

Low-cost

thin client computer

Workstation 1

Workstation 2

Workstation 3

Workstation 4

Workstation 5

Workstation 6

Cables

How does it work?

LTSP makes use of the following existing technologies:

DHCP, Etherboot or PXE, TFTP, NFS, XDMCP, Xorg or Xfree86, GNU/Linux and others

LTSP is the glue between these technologies, and also supplies the filesystem that the thin clients use.

Thin clients start up using etherboot or pxe, then searches for a DHCP server, which will specify an initial ramdisk that contains the Linux kernel

Once the kernel is loaded, and hardware is detected, the initial filesystems will be mounted via NFS, which will start the remote GDM session on the thin client.

How to get thin clients to boot

Thins clients can start up using:

Rom images installed on boot-proms

Floppy boot images

A combination of LILO and a rom-o-matic zlilo image

Where do I get boot images?

All types of Etherboot images can be generated by http://rom-o-matic.net

Boot roms can be sourced from Netday.org

Installing LTSP

Install your distro's server tools:

DHCP, TFTP, NFS

Install ltspcfg (obtainable from ltsp.org)

Use ltspcfg to download and install LTSP base system

Use ltspcfg or manually configure services

lts.conf

Explain lts.conf file

USE_XFS = N

LOCAL_APPS = N

SCREEN_01 = startx

SCREEN_02 = shell

USE_NFS_SWAP = Y

SWAPFILE_SIZE = 24m

# comment the following line to disable USB support

#RCFILE_01 = "usb"

# uncomment the following line to enable floppy support

RCFILE_02 = floppyd

# enable sound by default

#SOUND = Y

# choose either esd or nasd to be the default

#SOUND_DAEMON = "nasd"

# SOUND_DAEMON = "esd"

# default sound volume

#VOLUME = 75

### For ISA sound cards, you have to specify the module to use:

# SMODULE_01 = sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1

Questions?

2005-01-22T11:59:57