[K12OSN] Plans for K12Linux EL6 and Future Fedora

[Rob Owens]

On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 12:22:23PM -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On 5/13/2011 11:50 AM, Rob Owens wrote:
> >I made a mistake.  "next server" in dhcpd.conf is not correct.  If you
> >specify "SERVER=somefedoraserver" in lts.conf on a separate LTSP
> >Debian box, you could provide a remote Fedora experience as long as Fedora
> >supports remote X.  If remote X is not supported, then maybe a screen
> >script could be made for VNC, NX, or something similar.
> >
> >But I think Warren's suggestions of simply making a Debian chroot on a
> >Fedora/RHEL/CentOS machine makes more sense.  Am I wrong, or would you
> >just need to get Debian's ltsp-build-client to work on Fedora/RHEL?
> 
> You need this step to be able to find the debian kernel (etc.) to
> include, then save the results where the fedora/RHEL (etc.) host can
> use it as the boot image and nfs export to the client.  I think
> there should be some way to use a foreign-OS liveCD or image as the
> source so you could update without needing a fully installed copy,
> but don't know exactly what LTSP5 needs there. If it includes
> everything the client side executes, you'd be able to run a 64-bit
> host OS and support 32-bit clients.  Maybe if the
> debian/ubuntu/fedora packager were the same, the client chroot could
> be packaged individually and the debian/ubuntu flavors included for
> fedora, but you need some sort of update plan to handle security
> fixes, support for new hardware, etc.
> 
> It would also be handy to have a USB-boot version of the same thing
> plus a similar version that loads an NX client to use in situations
> where PXE booting doesn't work and/or you have limited bandwidth.
> 
I don't think you'd need a liveCD or anything (unless I'm
misunderstanding your intent).  The way it works on Debian is the chroot
gets built from debs that come from the Debian repository.  It can be
done with just an internet connection.

Assuming you can get the gpg trust thing worked out, a "yum install
ltsp" could grab the debs it needs from the Debian repository and
construct the chroot.  It could be as simple as importing the Debian
keyring into the keyring of "root" on the Fedora system.  I think that
keyring is located in the Debian package "debian-archive-keyring".  I'm
not sure if the Debian keyring even needs to be known by the Fedora
system, or if it only needs to be known in the chroot.

-Rob