FrequentlyAskedQuestions
From K12LTSP Wiki
Why Fedora? Why not Debian?
Debian is my favorite distribution, as it's the easiest to manage and upgrade. But if you're looking for an easy to use desktop OS, it's hard to beat Fedora. Fedora aims to be as free Debian, meaning they won't include any software which has questionable licensing. That means is much less likely for this project, or anybody who is using it, to be in violation of someones license agreement, and must be held accountable. Also, Fedora is a much better desktop OS than Debian is, as the interface has been standardized and streamlined to make it easier. Finally, Fedora is catching up to the easy of upgradeability of Debian with its' own implementation of utilities such as 'yum' and 'apt-get'.
I changed the desktop to twm. how do i switch back to KDE/Gnome?
When you log in there is a Session menu. Choose KDE/Gnome from the menu and your next login will be with that shell.
How much memory do I need for my server? What about Processor speed?
This is addressed in the Hardware section.
How do I get my teacher screen on to all of my student screens?
Use TeacherTool.
You could also try XMX.
Where is <somefilename>?
Two good ways to find a file are using the "find" and the "locate" commands.
The locate command searches a database of all the files in the file system and produces any matches. You might need to force an update of the database by running the "updatedb" command as root.
updatedb as root
locate <somefilename> as a regular user.
For example if you wanted to find the executable named lspci you could use locate lspci || grep bin.
The find command searches a path that you specify for many many things depending on how you call the command. It is strongly recommend you look at the man page to get an idea of what this command is capible of. You can search for many things other than a just a simple file name.
find /home/ -iname "somefilename" -print
- Command break down:
- "find" executable name.
- "/home/" path to the top level directory you want to start searching from.
- "-iname" search for a name, case insensitive.
- somefilename regular expression magic to search for any file name with the string 'somefilename' appearing in it.
- "-print" print the output to the standard output (not strictly necessary in this instance).
Thin client
If I build my own thin-clients out of old computers, what should their minimum specifications be?
This is addressed in the Hardware section.
Can I use old Macintoshes as thin clients? What about other platforms?
You sure can but sometimes the setup is difficult. This is covered in the Hardware section || Old Macintoshes as Thick Clients and there is an entry in the Technical section.
Can I use new Macintoshes as thin clients (for dual booting perhaps)?
Yes. See the Non-LTSP client section of the Technical section. There is also a bit of a write up at http://k12ltsp.org/osx_howto.html.
How do I find out exactly what hardware is in a specific thin client?
This is a bit involved but if you are looking for this information you're ready for it. There are three main steps: 1. Copy the files, 2. Set the client to boot to a shell, 3. Run the commands.
The command you are looking for is "lspci -vv" and "lspci -n". This command doesn't come standard in the OS that the thin clients boot so we will need to copy the binary and an database file over before it will run. There are two operating systems on your LTSP server. The system that the server runs located at /, and the stripped down version that the thin clients use to boot which is located at /opt/ltsp/i386/. From the shell prompt on the thin clients you will only be able to access commands in /opt/ltsp/i386/.
Copy the binary (Fedora specific path):
cp /sbin/lspci /opt/ltsp/i386/sbin/
Copy the database file (Fedora specific path):
cp /usr/share/hwdata/pci.ids /opt/ltsp/i386/usr/share/hwdata/pci.ids
Set a thin client to boot to the shell:
Open /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/lts.conf with your favorite editor comment out "SCREEN01 startx</strong>" and remove the comment from "<strong>SCREEN02 shell" to set all clients to boot to a shell at next boot. It is possible to set this for a single client as well.
Reboot the client you are interested in.
The client will boot and text will run across the screen and will stop without a prompt. The thin client has available virtual terminals but you will need to switch to one. You can do this by holding down the <Alt> key and pressing <F2>. There are actually six virtual terminals and this will work for <F1> through <F6>.
When you switch to the other virtual terminal you will be logged in as root. Simply run the lspci -vv command and you will get a screen full of information about all of the PCI devices attached to your thin client. Use the -n option to get the manufacturer ID's and the Product ID's of the devices. This is useful for looking up the device online.
lspci -vv lspci -n
