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 <vagr...@freegeek.org>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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