thin client how to

[Josiah Johnston]

I feel silly for asking, but how do I get thin clients to work?

The whole network boot thing is still new to me. I think it would be 
very helpful to include a diagram like these folks have:
	http://k12ltsp.org/contents.html
and explain the concept. Nowhere on the edubuntu website does it give 
an layman's (or even technical) explanation of a typical setup. When 
most people hear "computer" they think workstation. The installation 
documentation assumes you know what an "Edubuntu LTSP server" is. I 
looked up LTSP on my own, and found http://k12ltsp.org/ That's what 
first made me realize what's going on. Genius!
Now if only that was explained on the edubuntu site, or at least linked 
to other pages that explain the concept.

But I still don't know what's expected from a thin client. I finished 
working on the DNS problems on the LTSP server last night. Tonight 
after I finished working out hardware issues on workstations, I went 
back to working on the LTSP setup.
I understand Edubuntu's LTSP diverges significantly from k12ltsp. 
k12ltsp expects you to have two network cards. I tried an installation 
of that initially, but dropped it after noticing a line on the bottom 
of the installation page:
	"If you want to run your server with two network cards..."
and realized I didn't HAVE to have two network cards.

 From k12ltsp.org, I figured I could get a working computer, unplug its 
hard drive, turn on network boot, and things should go. It gets as far 
as telling me its MAC address. I worked out the IP of the intended 
client from pinging around the tiny network at my house, and found it 
was 192.168.0.5. I remembered the default range on the LTSP's 
/etc/ltsp/dhcp.conf was .20, so I changed it to .4 and typed
	sudo /etc/init.d/dhcp3-server restart

That went fine, but I get the same problem on the intended client.

What am I missing here? I normally would try to dig around for more 
documentation, but I noticed in an earlier post that k12ltsp should not 
be used for reference.

Once I get this figured out, I'll be happy to contribute to the layman 
audience documentation effort.

Oh, another documentation idea: a troubleshooting guide. The 
installation is beautiful, in that it requires minimal user 
interaction, but it's still possible for a user like myself to mess it 
up. In my vision, it would have tips on figuring out the IP, or what to 
do if you can't get on the internet (i.e. DNS problems).

Thanks in advance.

-Josiah