[K12OSN] K12LTSP on an intel mac mini?

[Jim Kronebusch]

On Tue, 28 Nov 2006 13:43:07 -0500, Bryant Patten wrote
> Has anyone had any success setting up a K12LTSP/LTSP server on a 
> Macintosh Mini (intel)?
> 
> I have a client that has some Apple credits and wants to pilot a 
> K12LTSP lab with a couple of machines.

It looks like you want to use a Mac mini as a server.  You can, install a PPC
os and then add the LTSP packages to it.  I did this and yes, I was able to
boot both i386 and PPC clients from it.  However, there is a huge downside.  I
could not get many of the i386 apps to run on the PPC os.  Most of the
edutainment stuff simply would not run, which sort of defeats the purpose.  

Better solution, stick with i386 for your server, then try and get mac minis
to work as clients if need be.  Your biggest hangup will most likely be video
on the client.  I would install Ubuntu PPC or some other PPC distro on one mac
mini as a full install.  Then copy the working XF86Config-4 file from it to
put on your LTSP server in the /opt/ltsp/ppc/etc folder (or where the default
location of XF86Config for clients is, that path may not be correct, my memory
isn't that hot) and name it as XF86Config-4.macmini (or whatever is relavent
to you, just so you can make sense of it) then in your lts.conf under the PPC
tree set things to your custom XF86Config file.

Of course the mac minis should boot to the i386 server simply by holding down
the N key.  If you need instructions on how to set them to boot to the network
permanently with Firmware commands just let me know.

Hope that helps.

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