[K12OSN] Thin clients booting from a different server

[Les Mikesell]

On Sun, 2006-08-06 at 09:50, Alan Hodson wrote:

> In a school where there is a powerful K12LTSP server the network gang
> has configured a few classroom drops with VLans pointing to it (they
> have small thin-client clusters). Works like a charm. However, a
> computer applications teacher has a second k12ltsp server for his lab
> hiding behind a switch, and needs to be able to share his "home" with
> one of the VLan classroom drops.

Can you be more specific about what that means?  Does he need to
boot clients from the remote lab or just access some files
or programs?

> My suggestion to create a second VLan
> for this second server has not been well received (?),

VLANs isolate their members so they are only appropriate
if that would be the only connection these clients
should have.  They also require managed switches and some
setup that may not work or be convenient.

>  so I am faced
> with perhaps having to forcefully route the MAC addresses of the
> classroom's thin clients to the IP of the second server. I will be
> changing the eth0 Bcast default IP of the second server to
> 192.168.1.255, and it will naturally have a distinct IP (10...). My
> question is, is this type of setup documented somewhere I have
> overlooked, or better yet, is anybody doing this "boot from another
> server" configuration successfully? What files need a tweak?

It doesn't make any sense to try to appear on the wrong interface
of the lab server and it isn't necessary.  If you do have to
boot these clients, just use the approach you would use on
a flat or routed network.  You need to be sure there is routing
between the clients and the 'outside' interface of the lab
server.  The "boot from another server" setup should be
documented somewhere but it just involves configuring the
DHCP server to give the clients it's address as the next-server
and in the root-path option.  You can do this for specific
clients from one DHCP server using the host/hardware ethernet
entries or if you can boot from floppies you can have another
dhcp server running on a different port.

Yet another option that might be easier would be to boot
the clients from CD's with something like the thinstation
iso http://www.thinstation.org/ and tell it what server
to use.  I don't think the advanced features like local
media/printers or sound match up with the way ltsp
does them, though. 

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   les at futuresource.com