Class Room LTSP with Edubuntu

LTSP with edubuntu 6.06 is as easy as 1,2,3!

Literally it is! with 3 easy steps I’ve got some of the computer of at my Lab up and booting the edubuntu 6.06 server. Some….? Well.. actually there was some problem booting the older Pentium 2 computers. I’ve got an error that says that the client can’t find the PXE Server. I’ll discuss those later at the troubleshooting section of this story of my edubuntu way to ltsp glory…

Here we go, I start my first step with configuring the /etc/ltsp/dhcp.conf to suite my current network

$sudo gedit /etc/ltsp/dhcp.conf

Assuming that the server’s ip address is 197.168.7.1

authoritative;

subnet 192.168.7.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
range 192.168.7.220 192.168.7.250;
option domain-name “lab.stsn.ac.id”;
option domain-name-servers 192.168.7.1;
option broadcast-address 192.168.7.255;
option routers 192.168.7.1;

option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;

filename “/ltsp/pxelinux.0″;
option root-path “/opt/ltsp/i386″;
}

Second step, start my dhcp server

$sudo /etc/init.d/dhcp start

And then the Third one is the last step :
Set your clients to boot from the network, this can be done in two ways : change the BIOS settings to make the client boot from the net, almost every new computers that have an on-board network interface support this feature. Or for a computer or network interface that doesn’t support network boot, you can build a startup disk to boot ltsp client’s, here is a great site for creating a boot image http://rom-o-matic.net

That’s it !?!

Well… I wish it was my last step that night, but faith took me the other way, the new AMD Sempron 3000+ computers boot right away without any problem but my lab only had 4 of those and the others are old compaq intel pentium2 PC’s that are unused coz the just can’t take life as a today computer . And in my case the trouble is to boot the PXE server with them even tough they can automatically detect the dhcp server.

I’ve found a great thread at the ubuntu community forum that discuss this matter and found out that the old version of intel LANdesk Service Agent II firmware 0.99 caused this problem. And heres another good link : http://syslinux.zytor.com/hardware.php#network.

These are the steps that i went through :

• Step 1: Edit /etc/inetd.conf. Since I already installed and configured the Ubuntu ltsp server packages, then I have a line for tftp there. Add “-r blksize” to the end of this line, save and exit. NB Do not waste your time with /etc/default/tftpd-hpa – this has no effect on the running of the service as it is started by inetd.
• Step 2:Edit /etc/sysctl.conf. Add the line “net/ipv4/ip_no_pmtu_disc=1″save, exit and reboot.

Then those pentium II zombies came to life!!!!

Credits to steps above goes all to v4169sgr, the guy who had a hard time finding this solution

After all clients are up and running i had another problem! I can’t login with the username and password that i made from the administration panel!!!

Later i found out that the ltsp system was located at /opt/ltsp/*architecture*/ then I do these steps :

$ sudo chroot /opt/ltsp/*architecture*/
$ sudo adduser *username*

note that you have to have make the same username both from the administrator control panel and from the steps above.

From then my Lab runs edubuntu LTSP without any trouble at all!

My second attempt to install edubuntu 6.06 is at a cyber cafe, and all that I’ve done is just those three easy steps i’ve mentioned earlier! nothing more! I didn’t encounter any of the trouble I’ve found earlier at my Lab! I’ve set up the cyber cafe into a edubuntu ltsp network in under half an hour! All of the clients were IBM Netvista’s with intel P3-800Mhz 128 Mb SDRAM that is slow like hell when it runs on Windows , but now they run as fast as the server!

In my opinion Edubuntu’s LTSP can be the solution for schools or labs or library’s that are searching for a cheap but powerful solution to aid their need for IT education, besides the easiness of the LTSP I havent found any linux distribution with an education application suite that are as good as Edubuntu’s.

Salam.

sumber http://yogharp.wordpress.com/2007/03/01/class-room-ltsp-with-edubuntu/