They have instructions for using a tarball where a distribution has not integrated the release.
Here are some hints for installing LTSP 5 in RHEL5 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5) using the tarball.
I decided to the use the Debian etch tarball from the list of downloads as I am more familiar with Debian out of those listed. Once the necessary RPMs have been installed DHCP, TFTP and NFS can be enabled in RHEL5 using system-config-services .
/usr/local/sbin/ltsp-update-sshkeys does not work because the tempfile command does not exist . Fix this by:
cd /bin
ln mktemp tempfile
then run /usr/local/sbin/ltsp-update-sshkeys
The filename in /etc/dhcp.conf for etherboot is /ltsp/debian_etch_i386/nbi.img
This is the /etc/dhcpd.conf file for my set up (a single client on my home network using a private address range):
# dhcpd.conf ddns-update-style ad-hoc;
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
option broadcast-address 192.168.250.255;
option routers 192.168.250.1;
option domain-name-servers 192.168.250.1;
option domain-name "takelap.com";
get-lease-hostnames true;
host 192.168.250.20 {
hardware ethernet 00:10:5a:cd:45:7b;
fixed-address 192.168.250.20;
next-server 192.168.250.205;
filename "/ltsp/debian_etch_i386/nbi.img";
option root-path "/opt/ltsp/i386";
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
option broadcast-address 192.168.250.255;
option routers 192.168.250.1;
option domain-name-servers 192.168.250.203;
option domain-name "takelap.com";
}
subnet 192.168.250.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
}
here 192.168.250.20 is the LTSP client that gets booted with Debian, 192.168.250.205 is the LTSP server running RHEL5. Note that for LTSP 5 root-path does not include the IP address of the server. If you put it in you will get "nfsmount: need a path" repeating messages.
I could not get tftp to work without disabling selinux, there must be a way of changing the policy to allow this. Of course disabling selinux would not be OK where this is a local security requirement.
Similarly, even though the firewall was opened up for tftp and NFS there was a problem with another protocol so for the time being the firewall is also disabled!
The LTSP client screen will still not display because LTSP expects a file /etc/X11/Xsession to exist on the server. In RHEL5 this corresponds to /etc/X11/xinit/Xsession .
This can be fixed by specifying the environment variable LDM_REMOTECMD in /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/lts.conf:
[192.168.250.20]
LDM_REMOTECMD = /etc/X11/xinit/Xsession