Hi everybody,
I'm new in this list and also to ltsp. I've been playing around with
ltps-4.2 and ltsp-5 with success. Great job pals!.
Now I came with this project: I want to build a "remote graphics display
device" that will allow me to connect it into my local net and show
dynamically generated png (or whatever) image files from a central server to
this "special thin-clients". The purpose is to create a network of
information screens that can be spread across a building.
This thin-clients would be "special" because they won´t have keyboard nor
mouse (nobody is going to use them as a workstation), only a cheap small
form factor i386 compatible pc and monitor. The image files transferred from
server to clients would be < 50KB, one each 10 seconds or so. Plan to have
10 of this devices in the 1st phase.
The preliminary requirements for the system should be as follows:
1. The clients should be unattended devices, no login required.
2. The clients should be always on showing the received images, no screen
saver, no blank screen.
3. No tool bars, icons, etc. Need all the screen real state to show the
image.
4. No pointer at all, don't want an image with the pointer in the middle of
the screen.
5. After a power failure, the system should get up automatically, at least
the clients, because some of them would be at locations difficult to reach.
6. Keep the system at minimum, don't need all that great applications that
came with distributions because the clients won't be workstations, but need
all the tools for sysadmin.
7. Everything that needs configuration should be done from the server,
whitout need to log into the client.
It seemed to me that ltsp would be the right way to go, so in my first
attempt at building such a system I used ltsp-5 on ubuntu gutsy (very easy
setup, almost all automatic). Then created a test account and wrote a simple
script to change the background to whatever image the script received. It
worked fine but couldn't do any of the preliminary requirements stated
before. I have experience with old distributions like redhat-6.2 were you
had to do almost anything by hand, but modern distributions are far more
complex today, many places to look around, many configuration files to
check, and with ltsp even more stuff.
I googled for some information and found a lot more stuff for ltsp-4.2 than
for ltsp-5. So I decided to try ltsp-4.2 on the same machine, and had a lot
of stuff broken but managed to fix them and get a login screen on the client
but still couldn't reach any of the preliminary goals either. For instance I
followed all the recommendations for automatic login but none of them
worked. The best thing I could do was to lauch the BlackBox window manager
on the client that allows me to use simple configuration files to get rid of
stuff I don't need like dock bars, etc. At this point I even ask myself if I
need a window manager at all, but left this as a refinement for when the
system had all the preliminary requirements fulfilled.
At this time I'm wondering if my problems arise from mixing two ltsp
distributions on the same machine, or it is that gutsy (or gnome) is far too
complex for what I'm trying to do.
Would like to hear your comments about:
1. which ltsp version (4.2 or 5) to use
2. which linux distribution to use for the server
3. any other thing that came to your mind would be helpful
Thanks a lot,
Jorge Trujillo
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