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Outside of the box uses for LTSP?

jmgibson1981 edited this page Oct 2, 2020 · 2 revisions

Compiling a list here of uses for LTSP that may not have been considered by all. If you add to this page please include what you did, how you did it, and how it helps you.

Installing a new system and eliminating PXE installers images / maintenance (Ubuntu / Debian)

You can do an entire debootstrap installation from inside of a booted LTSP client. Unfortunately LTSP booting isn't always the best method to accomplish something for a given machine. Maybe the machine you plan to setup isn't close to a lan cable and is on wifi only?

Previously it was nice to have PXE installers on the network. This was getting cumbersome because admittedly I'm having having difficulty figuring out iPXE. This old dog isn't learning new tricks to easy. Not much success and after awhile there had to be another way. Enter root access in the client.

Step 1 - Add your user to the client chroot. This is necessary because you need to have root / sudo access to do the above.

Step 2 - After adding your user you will need to manually add this user to the sudo group. Edit /etc/group inside the chroot and add your chroot created user to the sudo group.

Step 3 - Install packages. In this case debootstrap to the chroot.

Step 4 - Update image, ipxe, initrd and load your client.

When all is done you have a user in the client with sudo access. This has allowed me to debootstrap to an ssd installed into the client. There are probably plenty of other uses for giving yourself a user with root / sudo.

As linux drives can generally be moved from machine to machine with no ill effects you can see the possibilities. Add a hotswap bay to your client and you can add > install > remove > install to final destination to your heart's content. If you have a proxy or a good quality high speed internet connection you could script it and do full debootstrap installations on multiple drives all at the same time.

This has also eliminated the need for PXE based installers as long as I stay with Ubuntu & Debian, which I do. Less to maintain and keep up with.