Some more details about LTSP

[S. J. van Harmelen]

Hi,

On Wed, 2007-10-17 at 15:42 +0100, Gavin McCullagh wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Wed, 17 Oct 2007, S. J. van Harmelen wrote:
> 
> > 1) Booting with PXE you get some files from the tftpserver to start your
> > thinclient with. I guess a vmlinux and a initrd.
> > 2) While booting some scripts in the initrd mount / to the i386.img on
> > the server and the rest is loaded from there.
> 
> 3) When the thin client boots up it starts a set of services which by
>    default includes ldm -- the login screen.  
> 
> 4) When the user logs in, ldm connects to the server over an encypted
>    channel.  From then on every application (GNOME, OpenOffice, Firefox,
>    ....) runs on the server, but displays on the client.  None of these
>    applications run on the client.
> 
> So, without the server, there would be no applications without the server.
> Unless of course you are deviating from the norm and running local apps on
> the thin client which is supposed to be supported under gutsy, though is
> not the the standard track.

Sorry for not being clearer, but I absolutely understand how a terminal
server environment works. So of course you would need a server for
hosting your app's. In my case a Windows Terminal Server.

> 
> > As far as I understand, you then have a completely independent client
> > running except for the fact that your / is mounted to a image somewhere
> > else. 
> 
> Not really, no.  Except perhaps with local apps.
> 
> > But if you would extract the i386.img file to a local disk and
> > adjusted some start-up scripts in the initrd you could (theoretically)
> > boot the same client locally. Right (not that I want this btw, but just
> > making sure I understand correctly)?
> 
> Maybe with local apps.  
> 
> > My goal with LTSP is to build a rdesktop or Citrix client with local
> > device support (including printers). And since the needed rdesktop
> > scripts are already put in by Edubuntu, I will start with getting
> > rdesktop working.
> 
> rdesktop is an example of a local running application.  So, rdesktop does
> run on the thin client.  The web kiosk also does this.  However, the normal
> thin client mode runs programs on the server.

Ok, then this is what I'm meaning to do. I want to use a local app
(either rdesktop or Citrix) to connect to a Windows Terminal Server.

And I understand correctly that this should be possible with Gutsy. But
I also understand that I will have to figure out some of the stuff
myself because it's fairly new.

Then I just have 2 more questions:

1) In my case (using a local app) my thinclient is totally independent
from the deploymentserver, except for the fact the i386.img is on there
and I need that, but no scripts on the deploymentserver do anything on
the client after it is booted. All scripts then run from the client
itself. Right?

2) How does local device support work? Citrix and rdesktop both support
the use of local devices, but then the devices should be already be
mounted. I just read a peace about ltspfs and do I understand correctly
that this could/should do the automounting on the thinclient? Of course
with a Linux TS you then also need ltspfsd to make the mount available
in the virtual desktop, but in my case this part can be done by rdesktop
or Citrix buildin functionaly. Right?

> 
> Gavin


Thanks very much for your help Gavin!!

Sander
> 
>