Screen Scripts

Introduction to Screen Scripts

A screen script is a special script that resides in /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/screen.d. You can then reference this script in the lts.conf file as follows:

[ws001]
   SCREEN_01 = startx
   SCREEN_02 = shell

The above example will cause a GUI session to start on screen 1, and a shell to start on screen 2. You can switch between the screens by hitting Ctrl-Alt-F1 and Ctrl-Alt-F2.

Official LTSP Screen Scripts

These are the screen scripts that are included with LTSP

startx

This will start the Xserver on the console, and attempt to contact an XDMCP server on the network, to get a graphical dialog to appear.

Multiple XDMCP sessions to different servers

If you want i.e. to have a session to server a.b.c.d on screen_01 and a session to server w.x.y.z on screen_02 then you would use something like:

[ws001]
   SCREEN_01 = startx -query a.b.c.d
   SCREEN_02 = startx -query w.x.y.z

- ChristophSchneeberger - 20 Nov 2006

rdesktop

This will launch the rdesktop program locally, in full-screen mode. You can pass arguments after the rdesktop entry, and those arguments will be passed on to the real rdesktop program.

When using this script, the users won't even realize they are using Linux. The first interaction they have will be a Windows login dialog box, and when they log in, they'll go directly to a Windows session on the Windows server.

telnet

This will start a telnet session, and give you a login on the server.

shell

This will launch a shell session on the client. This should ONLY be used for testing and diagnostics on the thin client. The environment is rather limited, and the root filesystem is mounted read-only, so there's not much you can do there, other than look at config files. From the shell prompt, you can run startx to launch a graphical session. This is helpful for diagnosing problems with X. If the Xserver fails, it will return back to the shell prompt, and you should be able to read the error messages on the screen.

Contributed Screen Scripts

The scripts listed here were developed by volunteers, and haven't made it into the official LTSP distribution.

If you have a screen script you'd like to make available to others, please tell us about it here.

Screen script to help share local devs

Sharing local devs by samba with short passwords generated on VT1

Shutting down the terminal on disconnect

GDM (and probably other DM's also) have disconnect button. Usually the terminal reconnects on clicking this button. To shut down the terminal on disconnect you have to do 2 things

• add -once flag to XF_ARGS variable at /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/screen.d/startx
• add /sbin/haltsys command to the end of the same file. Probably you want to add a message of shutdown before that.

Play audio CDs

See LtspAudioCd for a screen script to play audio CDs. It's relatively easy to install and requires no bandwidth.