Building LTSP-4.2 using the LBE

Preface

First of all, you do NOT need to build the LBE to install LTSP-4.2. The LBE is the Build environment for LTSP, and is typically only used by LTSP developers, or people who want to dig in the internals of LTSP, and build parts of it.

That said, if you really DO want to build the LBE, then follow the instructions below.

If you do NOT want to build LTSP, then you should refer to the LTSP-4.2 installation instructions.

Before reading the following instructions for building LTSP-4.2, you should first take a look at the LBE Documentation.

Grab the lbe from cvs:

cd /usr/local
cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.ltsp.org:/usr/local/cvsroot checkout lbe

Fetch all the source tarballs

cd lbe
./build_all --fetch

Proxy problems during Fetch

If you have a proxy server that you must traverse before you can retrieve the files during the fetch phase, the following command should help you out. (It did for me on a SuSE^? Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) version 10 box)

export http_proxy="http://username:password@proxyserver.domain.com:3128"

-- JeremyDYoung - 05 Jan 2007

Problem fetching sh-utils-2.0.tar.gz

Currently it fails when fetching sh-utils-2.0.tar.gz. You may be able to get around this issue by doing the following:

$ cd /usr/local/lbe/tarballs
$ wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/ltsp/sh-utils-2.0.tar.gz

Then continue with the ./build_all --fetch.

-- ChrisJRoberts - 03 Jan 2008

Build the LBE

./build_all

Make the LTSP-4.2 packages

cd ltsp-src
./build --makepkg

This will put all the packages in the lbe/packages directory.

Create the packages.list file

cd ../packages
cat *.ltsp >packages.list

Building the kernel

Build the kernel

Within the lbe/ltsp_kernel_kit directory is a .config file for a 2.6.16.1 kernel. Download the sources for that kernel from ftp.kernel.org.

cd /usr/src
wget ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.16.1.tar.bz2
bunzip2 <linux-2.6.16.1.tar.bz2 | tar xf -
cd linux-2.6.16.1
cp /usr/local/lbe/ltsp_kernel_kit/config-2.6.16.1-ltsp-1 ./.config

Edit the Makefile in the kernel source directory, to adjust the EXTRAVERSION field to something like .1-ltsp-1

The result should look like this:

VERSION = 2
PATCHLEVEL = 6
SUBLEVEL = 16
EXTRAVERSION = .1-ltsp-1
NAME=Woozy Numbat

Save the Makefile, and then build the kernel:

make oldconfig
make
make modules_install

Prepare the kernel and initramfs for LTSP

cd /usr/local/lbe/ltsp_kernel_kit
./build_initramfs

That will ask where the kernel sources are, and then it will generate the initramfs and it will prepare the files you need for PXE booting. If you've got mknbi-linux installed, it will also prepare a kernel for Etherboot booting.

Install the LTSP-4.2 packages

Run ltspadmin, and make sure you select your package repository, and a location to install the LTSP-4.2 tree.

For my example, I use file:///usr/local/lbe/packages and /opt/ltsp-4.2 respectively.

Select all of the packages for installation.

Install the kernel modules

cd /opt/ltsp-4.2/i386/lib
mkdir modules
cd modules
tar xzf /tmp/ltsp_modules-2.6.16.1-ltsp-1.tgz

Install the PXE kernel and initramfs

cd /tmp
find ./2.6.16.1-ltsp-1 | cpio -pvmud /tftpboot/lts

Install the Etherboot kernel

cd /tmp
cp vmlinuz-2.6.16.1-ltsp-1 /tftpboot/lts

Setup /etc/exports for the new LTSP tree

Edit your /etc/exports file, and make sure you have a line like this:

/opt/ltsp-4.2             192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0(ro,no_root_squash,sync)

Then, make sure the kernel knows about the chagnes

exportfs -ra

Update dhcpd.conf for the new locations

In dhcpd.conf, make sure you point to the new kernels and rootpath.

option root-path  "192.168.0.254:/opt/ltsp-4.2/i386";

if substring (option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 9) = "PXEClient" {
    filename "/tftpboot/lts/2.6.16.1-ltsp-1/pxelinux.0";
}
else{
    filename "/tftpboot/lts/vmlinuz-2.6.16.1-ltsp-1";
}

Make sure you restart dhcpd to use the new settings.

Create a lts.conf file

Make sure you have a lts.conf file in /opt/ltsp-4.2/i386/etc.

Boot the client

Go ahead and boot the thin client, and enjoy

Report problems

If you have any problems, report them to the ltsp-discuss mailing list, or the #ltsp IRC channel

-- JimMcQuillan - 05 Apr 2006