[K12OSN] lts.conf query

[Calvin Dodge]

On Wed, Mar 23, 2005 at 08:16:14AM -0800, Huck wrote:
> 
> Jim Kronebusch wrote:
> Plus I don't get how only entering a
> >workstation name would have any consistancy.  Can't workstation names
> >change at random depending on lease times and boot orders? 
> 
> I'm not sure on the whole DHCP leases and stuff...
> but not a single one of my thin clients has changed workstation names 
> since July(the date they went into production status).

DHCP tries to give workstations the same IP addresses each time - using
the info it's stored in /var/lib/dhcp/dhcpd.leases.  My experience has
been that this changes only for portable computers which have been taken
to other DHCP-based networks, then brought back home.
 
> And I've personally crashed the server twice(fiddling with stuff I aught 
> not fiddle with on a production server ;)  Thank Les for pointing me to 
> BackupPC which makes recovery a snap!

Speaking of that, I have a gentle hint for those using recent Dell Poweredge
rackmount servers (like my employer's 2650s).  DON'T RUN LM_SENSORS!
The program doesn't appear to have damaged the server I tried it out on
(which CAN happen with IBM Thinkpads), but it locked it up tight.

> I thought lts.conf or whatever looked at it was merely a script and 
> usually in scripts I thought you had the ability to do what I was thinking:
> 
> maclab = ws101,ws102,...

lts.conf is just a configuration file, not a script.  The various scripts in
/opt/ltsp/i386/etc configure the terminals, using "getltscfg" to retrieve
settings (first default, then terminal-specific).  Getltscfg appears to be
a binary compiled from a 100K Perl file, so one would probably need to be
a Perl guru to 1) figure out how it picks out settings, and 2) how to change
it to meet your request.

My own opinion is that you're best off using the MAC addresses of the NICs -
you can add them to lts.conf with the one-liner which I posted to this list
recently, using the MAC address instead of the hostnames in the first part
of the one-liner (for n in MA:CA:AD:DR:ES:S1 MA:CA:AD:DR:ES:S2 etc)

You can get the MAC address by doing a "tail -f /var/lib/dhcp/dhcpd.leases"
or "tail -f /var/log/messages|grep DHCP" (as root), and then turning on the
terminal in question.

Calvin

-- 
Calvin Dodge
Certified Linux Bigot (tm)
http://www.caldodge.fpcc.net