I don't understand the desire to run "LTSP" on an android device.
We developed LTSP as a small "distribution of Linux" to run on fairly
low-end hardware because so many people weren't happy with the current
choices. At the time, the world was largely dominated by Windows 95 and 98.
LTSP was successful because there was a real need to deploy a Linux
operating system in place of the previous Windows operating system. We
knew that eliminating moving parts was a good idea and the technology
existing for booting a Linux kernel over the network. Etherboot was
excellent at this. It's since been mostly replaced by PXE and that's been
very successful as well.
Along with network booting, we were also able to develop central
configuration. Since we were pulling the kernel over the network, it made
sense to pull the configuration file as well. This central approach to
configuration and deployment made system administration pretty nice.
Now, if you look at the Android devices, They already have a perfectly
reasonable operating system. After all, it is Linux based.
Why not just connect the Android device using one of the existing
technologies?
- X-server for Android. A quick google search turned up several of them
- VNC for android. Again, google knows about a bunch of them
- NX client for android. I searched google, but didn't find one. I'm
guessing there is, or soon will be one.
Long term, everything is going web-based. There's some seriously cool
web-based stuff available already, and more is coming every day. LTSP for
the most part is going to become a platform for running a browser.
My thoughts are seriously starting to drift towards ChromeOS. I'm
wondering what it would take to make that net-bootable. FirefoxOS seems
interesting too, but I'm not convinced they have the resources to compete
against Google.
Jim McQuillan
[email protected]
On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 9:15 PM, Robert Lefebvre <[email protected]
> wrote:
> Thank you everybody. I think we have some really good discussion going and
> hopefully some people with the skills can step forward and build some of
> the needed parts that could make all this easier and enable widespread use
> of these devices as thin clients. At our school, for example, I just built
> my first LTSP lab and the owner is estatic about the cost savings and the
> quality. But I look at these devices at $30-40 each (and retail at that)
> and see that low cost computer labs are right at our finger tips.
>
>
> >PXE is used to download software off the network... the software it
> downloads in
> >an LTSP environment is typically a linux kernel and an initramfs, which
> in turn
> >load other software off of the network, which typically loads LDM, a
> piece of
> >software... which connects to the server using other software... I'm
> telling
> >you, it's software all the way down.
>
> My background is web development rather than server admin and I've heard
> we had a similar situation back during the 'browser wars'. The solution
> then was also software based - they used javascript to detect the browser
> and delivered the proper code depending on the browser detected. It seems
> the solution to this current issue should be some type of detection
> software to detect the type of device. Such a solution could adapt to even
> as yet undeveloped hardware. Once the hardware type is identified,
> developers could deliver the kernel in some sort of modular approach. What
> I mean is large chunks of the kernel should/could be reused by different
> devices with intermittent customized kernel code applicable to the devices.
> It seems the current approach is for every developer, for every device, to
> start from scratch.
>
> While there has been plenty of warnings away from developing the needed
> boot process because of the complexity it just seems strange that there is,
> indeed, such a complexity given that Droid is linux based?
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 2:26 AM, Vagrant Cascadian <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Dec 04, 2012 at 12:04:01AM -0500, Robert Lefebvre wrote:
>> > >LDM is a piece of software that runs on the client hardware, and uses
>> SSH
>> > >to connect to the server.
>> >
>> >
>> > I don't understand this as we run about forty thin clients and they
>> boot with
>> > PXE and we don't put any software on them?
>>
>> PXE is used to download software off the network... the software it
>> downloads in
>> an LTSP environment is typically a linux kernel and an initramfs, which
>> in turn
>> load other software off of the network, which typically loads LDM, a
>> piece of
>> software... which connects to the server using other software... I'm
>> telling
>> you, it's software all the way down.
>>
>> LTSP itself is not actually a single piece of software, it's a collection
>> of
>> software to boot an OS off the network- so it can't really be an android
>> app,
>> per se. You could maybe create a chroot environment that was essentially
>> an
>> LTSP installation, or maybe even a chroot from a network mount... and
>> connect
>> to services provided by an LTSP server...
>>
>>
>> > Well I definitely don't understand it but when my current clients boot,
>> PXE and
>> > LTSP deliver them a login screen, that's all.
>>
>> I'm glad we've developed something that looks so simple on the surface. :)
>>
>> In many ways, LTSP has probably become more complicated than it needs to
>> be,
>> as the codebase has evolved over the years...
>>
>> I've been an LTSP developer for over 7 years now, gotten support for
>> building
>> arm LTSP/qemu on an x86 server in Debian, helped get a couple arm kernel
>> variants into Debian... We've got a long way to go before arm based thin
>> clients are straightforward... though it's looking a lot more feasible
>> than
>> just a few years ago.
>>
>>
>> > That doesn't seem too complicated
>> > to me but since there isn't anything out there yet to use these Android
>> devices
>> > as thin clients it must be complicated or it would have been done.
>>
>> So it is, and it isn't...
>>
>> There's nothing technically infeasible about it, a very capable person
>> could
>> patch together all the bits and pieces... although supporting arm devices
>> tend
>> to be a bit more fussy as not all the support has been merged in the
>> mainline
>> linux kernel, and while multiple different arm devices could use the same
>> root
>> filesystem, typically each device or family of arm devices requires a
>> separate
>> kernel. The capabilities of a given arm device vary widely, and aren't
>> necessarily consistant (i.e. they may boot from network (with some one-off
>> protocol, or with PXE), or from media such as an SD card, USB, SATA,
>> etc.).
>>
>> They don't tend to be general purpose computers. Some devices are
>> reasonably
>> well supported in distros such as Debian, Ubuntu or others, but many
>> devices
>> are only supported with the customized distro they ship with. And some of
>> those customized distros are more-or-less competant for traditional
>> thin-client
>> purposes, but support is often limited in duration, or limited in
>> functionality- they're more like appliances. It's not the flexibility you
>> get
>> building your LTSP environment from a linux distribution that's more of a
>> known
>> quantity.
>>
>> Because of that, I wouldn't recommend trying to hack on LTSP with the most
>> fussy devices first (i.e. anything ARM based). First, develop a proof of
>> concept for what you want to accomplish with more conventional
>> x86-compatible
>> hardware. Then when you have a firm grasp of what is involved, experiment
>> more wildly.
>>
>> Hope that's helpful.
>>
>>
>> live well,
>> vagrant
>>
>>
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>>
>
>
>
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