[Techtalk] progress with debian diskless client

[Chris Wilson]

Hi Maria,

On Tue, 21 Apr 2009, Maria McKinley wrote:

> Thanks Chris, disabling fsck and e2fsck did not help, and there are no
> logs, since it never gets past mounting the root file system read-only.

Well, you could also try using the netconsole boot option to send logs 
over the network, or a serial console, or just take a digital photo of the 
screen after the boot fails.

> I think you may be right, it is time to look at LTSP. Has anyone on this 
> list used LTSP? How difficult is it to install custom packages for the 
> client machines (ie. packages that are not part of the normal ubuntu or 
> debian distribution)? Wasn't clear to me from my first look at the 
> documentation.

I've used it. There are two ways to install packages:

1. chroot into the client filesystem, apt-get install package, exit chroot
    and run ltsp-update-image; or

2. use ltsp-built-client (which wipes the client filesystem and recreates
    it) with the right command-line options to add the packages that you
    want to the build in the first place (faster, if you know what you want
    at the start, but more tricky to get right).

Cheers, Chris.
-- 
Aptivate | http://www.aptivate.org | Phone: +44 1223 760887
The Humanitarian Centre, Fenner's, Gresham Road, Cambridge CB1 2ES

Aptivate is a not-for-profit company registered in England and Wales
with company number 04980791.