Tuesday, August 11, 2009

How to install LTSP on ubuntu 9.04

LTSP was available as an install option in Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10 from the alternate install CD . However I am unable to find it on the Jaunty CD. So, here is a quick how to on installing LTSP on ubuntu 9.04.

1) Install Ubuntu 9.04 desktop
You can follow the default documentation on Ubuntu site.

2) Set up a static IP on the system
You can refer to this post for setting up static IP on Jaunty.

3) Install dhcp3 server

$ sudo apt-get install dhcp3-server

You may also refer to this post for some more details on dhcp3 installation on Ubuntu 9.04.

4) Install open ssh server

$ sudo apt-get install open-sshserver

Ltsp uses ssh to tunnel X to the client machines.

5) Install ltsp

$ sudo apt-get install ltsp-server-standalone

This will download all the package needed for building LTSP.

6) Edit /etc/ltsp/dhcpd.conf to suit your IP requirement

The default dhcp3-server configuration file is in /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf. However when ltsp was installed it created a new config file for dhcp3 under /etc/ltsp/dhcp3.conf. You have to edit this dhcp3.conf to suit your IP requirements.

My dhcpd.conf looks like this. You can use this as a starting point.

Code:
 # Default LTSP dhcpd.conf config file.

#



authoritative;



subnet 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {

range 192.168.0.20 192.168.0.250;

option domain-name "example.com";

option domain-name-servers 192.168.0.1;

option broadcast-address 192.168.0.255;

option routers 192.168.0.1;

# next-server 192.168.0.1;

# get-lease-hostnames true;

option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;

option root-path "/opt/ltsp/i386";

if substring( option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 9 ) = "PXEClient" {

filename "/ltsp/i386/pxelinux.0";

} else {

filename "/ltsp/i386/nbi.img";

}

}


7) Run LTSP build client

$ sudo ltsp-build-client

This command will build the ltsp environment under /opt/ltsp and build the squashfs image for clients.

8) Enable pxe boot on a client machine and test the set-up.

Trouble shooting

1) If your client boots up and says "You are not authorised to connect to server" , run the following.
$sudo ltsp-update-sshkeys
$sudo ltsp-update-image

2) If you change the IP address of the server, run the same commands again, ie

$sudo ltsp-update-sshkeys
$sudo ltsp-update-image

12 comments:

NiallB said...

How are you finding performance with this? How many terminals are you running?

I've been helping with a system that worked perfectly well on Ubuntu 7.04 two years ago, but since updating to LTS 8.04 and further has had nothing but problems when even three people are using terminals - 7.04 was happy with 15 or more. We still have the same desktops, 1.6GHz with 256MB to 512MB RAM.

We've upgraded the network to gigabit, and added RAM to the server, but it's still unusable compared to the older release.

I've replaced the libX11 .deb with the older one as suggested on bug reports such as Bug #277069 in ia32-lib on ubuntu launchpad, but it's still nowhere near expected performance.
This is by the way, not an ubuntu bug, but an X issue.

I've also moved from thin client to fat client on another network where funding wasn't quite so tight, but it's not an option here so I'd love to hear if the fresh setup over ssh tunnels is running smoothly.

Glad to hear somebody giving this a go.
It's fantastic when it works well!

NiallB

Fermi Level said...

We are running around 25 terminals, with Xeon and 8GB memory. You need around 128 Mb per client ( on the server) if you plan to use GNOME. Some of the clients run icewm and xface which need much less memory on the server.

Rendy said...

hello, can u give me the detail how to set up the LTSP on the client?? thanx. .

Fermi Level said...

At the client just enable the network boot from bios setup

Unknown said...

Is there support for client boot using a floppy image from http://rom-o-matic.net/ ? Or is a bootable NIC required for LTSP5 on Ubuntu?

Fermi Level said...

You can boot with rom-o-matic boot images from a floppy , cd or even grub

Anonymous said...

Hi, thanks for your posts, I've learned a lot about Ubuntu and LTSP in your blogs.

Can you help me?

It worked perfectly in Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop with 2-3 clients. However, I have one that I want to be a FAT client, since it's Core 2 Duo.

Now when I logged the client in the machine it says, Home folder not found, I read about it and says it's about the server not sharing the home folder properly through NFS, can you elaborate on that?

Finally if you have time, can you also make a tutorial for that one?

Thanks.

Anonymous said...

I am new in ubuntu 9.04. My questions are:

1. What about local printers ? are they mounted to print locally ?

2. Can I use a no-ip address to access a remote server using internet ?

The Computer Nerd said...

I am proably a little late with this but to install LTSP you use the alt install cd and hit F4 (options) then sellect install ltsp server. This is the same way that you do an OEM install.

Unknown said...

Where is the best source for help with a LTSP issue? I'm running LTSP on Edubuntu 9.10 and the client locks up after I login.

Unknown said...

Hello,

For support :
Support page from the LTSP wiki

IRC is very easy to use and the community will help you debug live. Mailing list as well,

Scaling: we are the developers of LTSP-cluster that is now completely integrated into LTSP since 9.04 and we are also doing the packaging of LTSP for Ubuntu.

The largest deployement we did is a 5000 seat deployment with around 50 application servers. You can expect 50-100 clients on a server (100 client : dual quad core) especially if you can use local applications that run directly on the thin client (i.e. : your thin client need to have 300MB of RAM and at least a PIII processor). So you can really have "fat client" but centrally managed from the same server as the LTSP server ;-)

Toni Septia said...

wew,,, I've tried, this is my college assignment, the results are successfully thanks for tuturial,,
^_^'