Last step before LTSP 5.2

Posted on 2010/01/26 by Stéphane Graber
ltsp

Tonight I released both LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project) 5.1.99 and LDM (LTSP’s display manager) 2.0.54.
Next up will be LTSP 5.2 that will basically be a bugfix release of 5.1.99 that should be rock solid and that we hope we’ll be able to use as a reference in the future.

LTSP 5.1.99 is bringing a lot of changes, optimizations and bug fixes as well as improvements in areas that haven’t been touched for a long time.
Here’s a quick overview:

  • Add Fat client support for Ubuntu (more on that after)
  • General optimization (using shell built-ins when possible, implement caching, improved data parsing, …)
  • Implement nbd-proxy for more stability (developed by Revolution Linux to prevent SQUASHFS errors and properly handle NBD fail-over)
  • Properly save/restore IFS (avoid some bugs that are usually very hard to debug)
  • Implement vendor specific functions in ltsp-build-client
  • Update a lot of ltsp-build-client plugins, sharing more code between Debian and Ubuntu, improving existing common functions
  • Speed up boot process by starting more functions in background and fixing tty/vt detection for flickerless boot

That’s of course not a complete changelog of what happened in 5.1.99, more details can be found in the package changelog or looking at the bzr branch history.

Now, to come back to that Fat client thing, recently, thin clients are getting a lot thicker. What we are now considering as recent thin clients, are actually the exact same hardware as netbooks and these are perfectly capable of running a full desktop.

That Fat client change adds the possibility to do something like:
ltsp-build-client --arch i386 --dist lucid --fat-client --fat-client edubuntu-desktop

And next time you boot, you’ll get the exact same LTSP login screen and will still be logging in against that same LTSP server, only difference, nothing will be running on the server, everything will be running locally. Of course locally means from the NBD image, there’s still no harddisk involved 🙂
Home directory gets mounted over sshfs which will work fine with most applications.

Thanks to both Jonathan Carter and Άλκης Γεωργόπουλος (Alkis Georgopoulos) for making a working LTSP plugin using the few hooks I implemented a while back in LTSP.

Now, as we clearly want LTSP 5.2 to be rock solid, please help us and test LTSP 5.1.99. It can be found in current Lucid and a Karmic backport is available in my PPA (never tried it yet though).
PPA publishing took a lot longer than expected, it should be online by 14:00 UTC on the 26th of January
Bugs can be reported here for Ubuntu-specific ones or here for upstream ones.

We’re usually around in on irc.freenode.net if you want to chat directly with us.

Posted in LTSP, Planet Ubuntu | 4 Comments

Edubuntu wiki day

Posted on 2010/01/20 by Stéphane Graber
Wiki day

Following the very successful Bug day we had last week, the Edubuntu project will be having an Edubuntu Wiki day tomorrow.

Wiki reorganization information can be found on this mailing-list post.

As for the Bug day last week, we’ll be discussing on (irc.freenode.net), going through wiki pages, moving them, setting redirections and deleting these that shouldn’t exist anymore.

Jonathan Carter will be coordinating that on IRC, I’ll also be around during the day.

Looking forward to having a clean wiki and discussing with you tomorrow.

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Edubuntu bug day on Tuesday (12nd of January)

Posted on 2010/01/10 by Stéphane Graber

On Tuesday the 12nd of January, the Edubuntu project will have its first bug day for the Lucid development cycle.

Edubuntu logo

It’ll be coordinated by Scott Balneaves, our dear LTSP developer, Sabayon developer and most recently Edubuntu council member. The event will take place all day in on irc.freenode.net.

At least Jonathan Carter and I will also be around during that day (as part of our work for Revolution Linux).
We will help these interested in looking for education software bugs in the most recent daily image and confirm/close the various bugs we have on Launchpad.

It’s also a very good opportunity for everyone interested in Edubuntu to come and discuss in .

The announcement from Scott can be found here, bug suggestions can be sent to the Mailing-List.

Looking forward to talking to you in .

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Ubuntu Desktop in the Cloud, now working with Lucid

Posted on 2009/12/12 by Stéphane Graber

Just a few minutes ago, I noticed an update to the Desktop in the cloud blueprint on Launchpad.

It basically said that images available at http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/desktop/lucid/current now contain a NX server (neatx).

I did a quick test on EC2:

  • Create a new instance: ec2-run-instances ami-0a749663 –instance-type m1.large –region us-east-1 –key ${EC2_KEYPAIR_US_EAST_1}
  • Waited for it to start, watching with: ec2-describe-instances
  • Got the public IP and connected using ssh: ssh -i data/ec2/ec2-keypair.pem ubuntu@[some EC2 ip]
  • Created a new user with: sudo adduser test
  • Connected using a NX client (qtnx or the binary one)
  • Destroyed the test instance: ec2-terminate-instances

That was extremely easy and got me a working NX session showing a regular Ubuntu desktop. Thanks to everyone who made that happen !!

Posted in Planet Ubuntu | 8 Comments

In-flight internet and LXC working in libvirt

Posted on 2009/11/15 by Stéphane Graber

Interesting day, flying from Montreal, Quebec to Dallas, Texas for the Ubuntu Developer Summit.
I have been able to try American Airlines’ in-flight wireless, it works surprisingly well, I get a stable 80ms latency to my home server and a quick bandwidth test gives me some 100kB/s.

On a completely different topic but still somewhat related, on that same flight, I have been able to install the latest libvirt packages I uploaded this morning to my PPA.

It’s the first time I actually manage to get networking to work with LXC in libvirt using libvirt’s network configuration.

I’ll be trying to convert some of the UDS attendees so they try it out and help making it work just fine in Lucid. Having that and kvm supported by libvirt will make Ubuntu a rocking platform for virtualization/contextualization.

Quick quote from my first test (starting the container, entering it, setting up network with DHCP, pinging my home server):

root@castiana:~# sudo virsh --connect lxc:///
Welcome to virsh, the virtualization interactive terminal.

Type:  'help' for help with commands
       'quit' to quit

virsh # start shell
Domain shell started

virsh # console shell
Connected to domain shell
Escape character is ^]
root@castiana:/# dhclient3 eth0
There is already a pid file /var/run/dhclient.pid with pid 29
removed stale PID file
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.1.1
Copyright 2004-2008 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/

Listening on LPF/eth0/52:54:00:d8:9b:96
Sending on   LPF/eth0/52:54:00:d8:9b:96
Sending on   Socket/fallback
DHCPREQUEST of 192.168.122.78 on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPACK of 192.168.122.78 from 192.168.122.1
bound to 192.168.122.78 -- renewal in 1749 seconds.
root@castiana:/# ping athos.stgraber.org
PING athos.stgraber.org (24.200.46.78) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from modemcable078.46-200-24.mc.videotron.ca (24.200.46.78): icmp_seq=1 ttl=43 time=94.1 ms
^C
--- athos.stgraber.org ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 94.124/94.124/94.124/0.000 ms
root@castiana:/# ps aux
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
root         1  0.0  0.0  17636  1772 pts/0    Ss   20:16   0:00 /bin/bash
root        29  0.0  0.0   6488   440 ?        Ss   20:16   0:00 dhclient3 eth0
root        31  0.0  0.0  14892  1028 pts/0    R+   20:16   0:00 ps aux
root@castiana:/#

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