[K12OSN] LTSP 4.4.1 client booting fails

Hung Phan phanh at canby.k12.or.us
Wed Jun 7 16:26:05 UTC 2006


All necessary services are running, eth properties are correct. I  
spent several hrs figuring the problem, even reinstall the OS but  
nothing correct the problem.

It went away when I change to a different server. LTSP 4.4.1 works  
right out of the box. I'd think the problem is with the hardware, but  
it can be problem with config because on the problem server, we have  
eth0, eth1, and eth2 where eth1 and eth2 were working. May be the  
config is looking for eth0 and eth1??? May be it is just HW problem.


On Jun 5, 2006, at 7:18 PM, Gavin Chester wrote:

> On Mon, 2006-06-05 at 16:52 -0700, Hung Phan wrote:
>> I'm using K12LTSP 4.4.1 (Fedora Core 4) with Neoware C50 thin client.
>> The server obtain IP through DHCP (and it works) and serve out
>> through eth2 (because eth0 inboard is dead, it is Intel Pro 100
>> eepro100 card)
>>
>> The client cannot boot, it keep running tftp......until it timeout.
>> When the client boots, I run tail -f /var/log/messages. It shows the
>> client obtain an IP, and eventually timeout with PXE.
>>
>> Check tftpd, it's running. Check xinetd.d/tftp, nothing changes in
>> the file.
>>
>> When I check the default kernel at /tftpboot/lts/pxe, it doesn't
>> exist. Only the kernel with options compiled 2.4.9-1-kitchen-sink
>>
>> I know the thin client works because we test it with different server
>> before.
>>
>> Can anyone offers some advices, please?
>
> I had the same problem with PXE clients that I posted to this list  
> last
> week.  Several replies came back but didn't allow me to solve it.  In
> the end it turned out to be a flaw in the install process (if you're
> reading this, Eric?) that I finally stumbled on, broke through and now
> have my system running with both PXE clients and floppy-boot  
> clients.  I
> don't mean I solved it in any clever way, I just chose my install
> options differently :-)
>
> Download the LTSP documentation, it contains many useful
> trouble-shooting instructions.  Some things to look for:
> 1/ Look closely at all your most important services, dhcp, tftp, etc.
> You may find some of them not running, I certainly did on my server.
> 2/ Look at the IP address given to your NIC that connects to your
> clients.  It should be IP: 192.168.0.254 mask: 255.255.255.0.  It must
> have this address locked in, and eth0 must start when you boot your
> server.  Mine kept failing and not finding its IP address.
> 3/ Look at your network devices status by running
> 'system-config-network' as superuser from a terminal, or select  
> 'network
> device control' from your 'system tools' menu.  Examine your NIC
> properties and check that it stays activated for your clients.  Mine
> kept dropping back to 'inactive' whenever I booted a client after my
> manual configurations and restarting xinetd.
> 4/ In the same dialogue box, check the 'hosts' associated with your  
> NIC.
> It should be populated with lots of ws001, ws002, etc.  Mine was
> completely empty.
>
> I tried installing 4.4.1 many times on my server without success on  
> any
> of the points above.  I also configured services manually after  
> bootup.
> I didn't know enough to do it thoroughly, so it never worked.  This  
> was
> a shock to me because when I used earlier versions of K12LTSP  
> everything
> just worked, even though I didn't know Linux at the time and certainly
> didn't know how to configure networking services.
>
> This time around, I finally got my system working by choosing to  
> install
> ONLY the default settings.  That is, when I had installed 'everything'
> or made extensive package selections, making sure to include LTSP, my
> server would end up not working for my clients.  The only way I  
> finally
> cracked it was to choose the default 'LTSP' install option and not
> change any other package choices that came with that (save  
> substituting
> KDE for Gnome).  Now, everything works just fine, phew.
>
> If other people are having similar problems (?) maybe the installer
> scripts need a little look, Eric (if you're reading)?
>
> I HTH, Hung.  Post a followup if it does.
>
> Gavin.
>
>
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