It is more likely that you run into trouble. It might not be your fault. Problems emmerging from
hardware issues are the most difficult to solve. But the hardware has gotten so chip that if yours
is faulty, just get a new one. The issues I ran into are slightly from software perspective. I had
some hardware issues, but as I said: get a new one. In the sequence of booting, the first problem you
might encounter is from the etherboot side effect. You get a screen saying
probing ...[cyclone] No adapter found
sleep
abort
Then you know that you have gotten the wrong etherboot code for your NIC or your floppy is faulty.
You just need to make sure that your floppy is good and that you have the right etherboot code.
If you get to the point that it can actually detect the MAC address of the NIC and sleeps at searching
server (DHCP)... Then your floppy and etherboot are good. You now need to focus on something else.
Check if the dhcp daemon is running on the server:
# chkconfig --list | grep dhcpd
This will show the availability of dhcpd at cited runlevels. As you will be running either at runlevel
3 or 5, you need to turn on dhcpd service at those runlevels:
# chkconfig --level 35 dhcpd on
Then start the service using:
#service dhcpd start
You should double-check using "ps -aux | grep dhcpd" to see if the service is running. This command
is useful for service checking. You should also check the physical connection of your network and
the dhcpd.conf file.
You can get a dhcp reply, but still not being able to load the kernel. The kernel gets downloaded
using tftp. You might get a message such as: "loading 192.168.10.26:/lts/vmlinuz-2.4.19-ltsp-1 |"
with a steady "|". In normal load this is a rotating bar. At this point use the checking tools
to detect tftpd running. I will suggest you look into the start up script /etc/xinetd.d/tfp that
contains the information required to run tftpd and change the bit of the variable "disable" to "no".
Remark that tftp has a symbolic link at the server argument to /tftpboot; this is the
directory that contains the kernel that will be loaded for the workstations. After having done
the previous job, check if tftp is on by running "chkconfig --list | grep tftp".
You should get the result "tftp: on".
The next point is getting problems in mounting root filesystem. Remember that your root filesytem
is at /opt/ltsp/i386 on the server; you should have noticed that in the dhcpd.conf file in the root
path argument line. NFS uses portmap, nfsd and mountd. The following shows the step to fix the problem:
# chkconfig --level 35 nfs on
# chkconfig --level 35 portmap on
# chkconfig --list nfs
nfs 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:off 5:on 6:off
# chkconfig --list portmap
portmap 0:off 1:off 2:off 3:on 4:off 5:on 6:off
NFS has 2 daemons that need to be running: mountd and nfsd. Once you've done the above settings,
turn on the service of nfs using:
# /etc/init.d/nfs start (or #service nfs start)
Starting NFS services: [ OK ]
Starting NFS quotas: [ OK ]
Starting NFS daemon: [ OK ]
Starting NFS mountd: [ OK ]
You also need to investigate the file /etc/exports to make sure that the directories are exported.
If there're not, uncomment the ones that refer to /opt/ltsp/i386, /var/opt/ltsp/swapfiles and
/home. The latter is used for applications. After the changes have been made, run the command
#exportfs -r to reexport the directories.
Configuring X is the most painful job to perform under LTSP. If you get a grey screen with an "X"
in the middle, you have more chance that the display manager is not turned on the server. If you
are in gnome or kde environment, you need to run gdm or kdm respectively on the server. For more
information about X configuration, refer to the documentation page.
ENJOY THE POWER OF LTSP