Getting LTSP 5 working on RHEL5

The Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) has released version 5 for integration with Linux distributions.

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