Help setting up a ltsp server from scratch

--D_S--

Hi I am part of a student group in San Carlos University in Guatemala, recently our server's harddisk died so we are building a server for our network from scratch.

We already have the sistem runing with all the services but when trying to boot from the network the clients get stuck in dhcp. In the server the log says that it detected the clients and tries to give them an ip repeatedly.

All other computers get their ip normally just the clients don't we haven't modified them.
They all boot from a zlilo image from the old setup.
We also tried with new zlilo images.

Is it possible to boot a pc and connect graphically to the server without booting from it(the server)?

Please let me know if you need me to post some info.

Thanks
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MEW · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 15 Dec 2005 Posts: 131

Yes, it is possible for clients to have graphical sessions on the server even if they booted from elsewhere. Each of the protocols is separate from the others (e.g. getting an IP address with DHCP does not necessitate downloading the kernel over the network using TFTP, which does not necessitate having a root filesystem mounted over NFS, etc.).

X11 is a network-transparent protocol, so applications can run anywhere on a network (or the Internet) and display on your computer (theoretically, bandwidth may be an issue). The way that you get a complete remote session is using the X Display Manager Control Protocol (XDMCP), which contacts a server that runs an X display manager (xdm, gdm, kdm, etc.) to ask that it connect to and offer service to the local display.

xorg-x11 has XDMCP client support builtin; To get a session, run "X -broadcast" to broadcast a request for service and accept the first offer; run "X -query <hostname or IP address>" to have X ask a specific host for service; or "X -indirect <hostname or IP address>" to have X contact a specific host and ask it to display a list of the hosts that are willing to provide service. You will probably want to use "X -broadcast" or "X -query <servername>".
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Moo.

MEW · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 15 Dec 2005 Posts: 131

About the other part of your problem (DHCP with diskless clients), please post a section of the logfile about it. Also, please post more information about your setup (are you using LTSP or homebrew? When does it get stuck - before loading the kernel via TFTP (if it does that) or when setting up the network once the kernel is loaded and running? What DHCP server are you using?)
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Moo.

--D_S-- · Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 11:53 pm Post subject:

The clients do not receive an ip adress when booting:

dhcp server :
net-misc/dhcp

/var/log/messages :

MEW · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 15 Dec 2005 Posts: 131

Do you have a firewall on your server that is dropping the outgoing DHCPOFFER packets? Have any non-diskless clients been able to get IP addresses using DHCP?

Try booting from a hard disk (into *nix) or from a livecd, then starting something like ethereal monitoring all interfaces, then running dhcp to try to get an IP address. Does the DHCPOFFER packet get to you?
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Moo.

--D_S-- · Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2006 1:16 am Post subject:

Sorry for the late reply

We are currently running the terminals with an old gentoo install and logging to our server with X as a temporary solution(thanks for the tip).

All the teminals get their ip adresses instantly and external computers too. The problem is when booting with pxe with a zlilo image from http://www.rom-o-matic.net/. (they booted perfectly with the last server)

All the clients have a small hard disk with a minimal gentoo install, the hd has a lilo boot with the zlilo image. We have tried some zlilo images from rom-o-matic but none worked.

The clients are very old P2 and P3 an our server is a 1.6 ghz p4 so we are a little tight with resources. As we have very little experience in this, would it be better to boot from the clients and log into the server and share the client resources with the server, like floppies and usb (is this possible?) or is it better to boot with pxe?

Thanks alot for the help.
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MEW · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 15 Dec 2005 Posts: 131

I don't really have enough experience to say which would be better. I would probably personally go with PXE, but the only experience I've had with it was to try it out with only one client.

It should be possible to share the client resources to the server. Network block devices (nbd) would probably work (it lets a client access a block device (such as a floppy) over the network. (Note: The terminal will be the nbd server because it is sharing its block device). NBD requires kernel support on the client, but I don't think it is needed on the server.) I have even less experience with NBD, though, because I have not been successful yet in setting it up (because of my only half-baked, non-gentoo environment on the clients, I think).
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Moo.

Slurp53 · Apprentice Joined: 14 Jun 2002 Posts: 255 Location: Iowa

I had the exact same problem when trying a 'from scratch' install using Slackware. Everything I plugged into the DHCP server would get an IP except for the LTSP box. I finally found something in the LTSP wiki in the DHCP section. If I remember correctly it had something to do with the version of the DHCP server and an extra line that needed to be in the config file. I don't remember exactly what that line was, but you can find my working DHCP config file at http://www.cegger.com/index.php?id=270 and a bunch of other notes I made on getting it to work.

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--D_S-- · Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 4:23 am Post subject:

Thanks a lot.

Unfortunately The university is now closed because of "Semana Santa"(holy week) holyday untill monday 17. So I will have some time to study the problem.

Thanks I'll post my findings here later.
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