LTSP 10.04 General impression

[Andre Laforest]

I don't see myself saying to a highscool teacher to do the tftpd-hpa trick. It is a thing for IT staff or technical personne. This is not
ready to help teacher in classroom.

How can you convice a school director or internet café owner if you need to do that? We need something that at least :
support automatique for 1 or 2 nic.
ltsp work out of the box.

Then we can promot it at large.

André Laforest

[Jonathan Carter (jonathan)]

Thank you for your bug report. Could you please elaborate on the actual bug? Is there perhaps another bug report already filed for that issue?

While we take comments about usability very seriously, we have to close this bug report if it doesn't contain any new information that can lead to a task.

[Theo Schmidt (theo-schmidt)]

I'm very keen on using the super new Edubuntu 10.04 LTSP "out of the box". I downloaded and tried the Edubuntu 10.04 image on a real DVD. Edubuntu worked fine, and the new LTSP-live ran without errors but didn't allow any of my thin clients to boot (no DHCP). I checked the DVD, found errors, burned a new one without errors and tried again. Still didn't work as intended (no DHCP). Occasionally the thin client would boot but hang during the splash. Same with two quite different thin clients. I eventually found out that running LTSP-live with the thin client already switched on and listening would get it to boot occasionally. If it didn't work the first time, switching from eth0 to eth1 (or vice versa) could work, irrespective of how many NICs were actually present and where. Testing was both with a cross-over ethernet cable and with a router/switch.
I now installed Edubuntu from the live DVD without a network connection. LTSP-live is gone and LTSP is not installed. There is no mention of LTSP anywhere. On the terminal "ltsp-install" (or "ltsp-installer" is available, but sudo ltsp-install fails with numerous errors like "/dev/target/proc not found".
On the Ubuntu-servers there is not yet any documentation on how to proceed with a fresh Edubuntu 10.04 install. No specific bug reports, but a mention at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=9246351.
I'm sure I could get it running like I did with Kubuntu 8.04 two years ago, but I think it is time that a newbie should be able to use LTSP from a fresh Edubuntu install, hence this posting here. It is not clear (to a newbie) if LTSP-live is only available in the live environment and if so, whether the real LTSP packages are on the DVD or not. They are actually on the DVD but neither kpackagekit nor synaptic are able to mount the dvd. To sum up, LTSP-live works but only with fiddling, and LTSP on a HD-install is not installable without an internet connection. Usability is not yet good enough for a newbie.

[Jonathan Carter (jonathan)]

There has been other users who have also provided feedback on not being able to find ltsp live on the installed system. There isn't actually such a feature on the installed system, LTSP live is only available from the Live CD. We currently have no way of activating a "Live LTSP" session without making (semi-)permanent changes to the system.

I agree that things should be easier for new users, and something that we continually work on. For the next release we're going to change how LTSP installation works by integrating it with the installer, with more information directly available from the installer so that even a brand new user who have never installed it before will know what's going on at every step of the process.

On an already installed system, you have to install LTSP using these instructions: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuLTSP/LTSPQuickInstall#Installing%20on%20top%20of%20an%20already%20running%20desktop%20system

These issues are being addressed in specifications targeted for the next released, closing bug.

[Theo Schmidt (theo-schmidt)]

Thank you. The problem is now still that the LTSPQuickinstallInstructions suggest using F4 at boot time to choose "Install a LTSP server". However this is no longer available.
The second part of the instructions, installing on an existing system, are not possible (on my machine) without an internet connection. (However this is a different bug.)
Therefore the "General Impression" is still that the half-working LTSP-live is a great improvement, but installing LTSP has become more difficult. This should be fixed for Edubuntu 10.04.1.