Hi Mitch, On Sun, 23 Nov 2008, Mitch Bradley wrote:
> > > > [discussion about LTSP and PXE and Etherboot and wired ethernet adapters] > > Why is PXE necessary for LTSP? Its not, but if one wants to boot some of the time as a thin client, and some of the time as as a standalone computer, then it becomes very handy. It also allows "thin-clientness" without altering the filesystem on the XO, preserving all the good work done on that software environment. What I was thinking of with the original question was the following scenario: An XO user runs the stock onboard software stack most of the time. The same user visits a location with an LTSP server. He wants to take advantage of the additional computing power available on that LTSP server, so he plugs into the ethernet, and boots disklessly as a LTSP thin client, w/o any reconfiguration necessary on his part, or any reconfiguration of the LTSP server. I happen to make solar powered LTSP servers that are being deployed in many of the same areas as the XO. I want to know what I need to support on the server side to allow this functionality. PXE requires no alteration to either system... hence my original question. > From the LTSP web site, I get the > impression that it can run inside several distros, including Fedora and > Debian. There are Fedora- and Debian- derived distros for XO. There are LTSP packages for many distros. One could build from source for others. > > XO's OFW firmware can load kernels and initramfs's over either USB > Ethernet adapters or the built-in wireless, using TFTP or HTTP or NFS. OK, but that requires some user interaction with OFW, correct? You are saying that OFW can behave like PXE, by pulling a dhcp address via wireless then TFTPing a kernel/initrd? If so, that probably solves my problem, enumerated above. > It's also possible to boot diskless with root on NFS. In fact that's > how the manufacturer runs their Linux-based burn-in diagnostics. LTSP uses a NBD for root filesystem in recent releases, iirc. > > What you can't do is run an absolutely stock distro, because you need a > kernel that supports the OLPC-specific hardware. Which devices in particular? Can these device drivers be merged into the upstream kernel tree, or are we still dealing with a binary blob somewhere? Enjoy, Scott > > > _______________________________________________ > Devel mailing list > Devel@lists.laptop.org > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel > _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel