[K12OSN] Updating the PXE start files

[Les Mikesell]

Kenneth Lundström wrote:
> I have used LTSP and K12LTSP for maybe two years or correctly said my 
> client has been using it. The K12LTSP is very easy to install and use. 
> Thank you everybody who has been working on it and made so easy to use.
> 
> My client got an new Thinkpad R61 and would like to use it mostly as an 
> client in the LTSP network. I´m offsite so I installed an test server 
> from the same CD:s to find out if I could get the Thinkpad to work with 
> K12LTSP.
> 
> For some reason the network card is not detected automatically. It toke 
> me two nights to find out why opion-128 and option-129 does not work 
> with PXE. Now I know it shouldn´t work. I mixed Etherboot and PXE in my 
> mind. When I finally got there next problem presented it self. dhcpcd 
> error, after spending half a night trying to find out why I found that 
> kernel should be updated.
> 
> Somewhere I read that K12LTSP is updated with yum. So I made a 'yum 
> update -y' but files in /tftpboot/lts/pxe are not updated. So I used 
> ltspadmin and installed newest LTSP files, after som trial and error I 
> get the DHCP to offer the right files and got the laptop to boot.
> 
> Is there a way to automatically update even those PXE files?

Yum should update to the latest version of the files that were built for 
the distribution version you installed (there have been many k12ltsp 
distribution versions based on both fedora and centos).  If you want the 
latest, you have to install the latest version of the distribution.

But for an easier solution, if the laptop is capable of booting itself, 
why not just run vnc, the NX client against freenx on the server, or X 
in '-query server' mode when you want to be a client to the k12ltsp 
server.  These give pretty much the same functionality plus better use 
of local resources if you want them and are cross-platform so it 
wouldn't matter if the laptop booted windows or linux itself.  My 
preference from those choices would be to boot the windows that probably 
came pre-installed on the laptop and run the free NX client that you can 
download from http://www.nomachine.com with freenx on the k12ltsp 
server.  There is a small amount of setup to make this work (you have to 
copy over an ssh key) but it only has to be done once and freenx has 
some advantages in performance and being able to re-connect to 
suspended/running sessions.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com