[K12OSN] Thin clients booting from a different server

Alan Hodson ahodson at elp.rr.com
Sun Aug 6 17:56:43 UTC 2006


a) Yes, the booting thin clients need to boot from the remote lab,
although a shared storage area in the remote server might just do the
trick. I'll have to ask the teacher.

b) The thin clients are diskless - no CD/floppy drives... purchasing
them I suppose may be another consideration.

c) <<<it just involves configuring the DHCP server to give the clients
it's address as the next-server and in the root-path option>>> 
Configuring the DHCP of the main VLAN (main server) involves a change in
what files?

Thanks again
Alan
-=o=-

On Sun, 2006-08-06 at 12:09 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
> 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. 
> 




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