Hello all, I have a customer that insists of using upstream vendor's diskless (system-config-netboot) rather than LTSP. The reason is that he wants to use a 100% packages from the vendor, not from LTSP or any other party.
I try the vendor's diskless system, and although it's very simple to setup, it lacks the support and/or documentation whereas LTSP is very good in it. Another sample is that he wants to connect a scanner to the client, I doubt it can be, since there's no documentation about it at all from the vendor.
Is there any fundamental difference between the two setups? Thank you.
On Fri, 2008-04-18 at 15:38 +0700, Fajar Priyanto wrote:
Hello all, I have a customer that insists of using upstream vendor's diskless (system-config-netboot) rather than LTSP. The reason is that he wants to use a 100% packages from the vendor, not from LTSP or any other party.
I to have one that insists on it also.They want to stay in the Red Hat/CentOS Realm of things.
I try the vendor's diskless system, and although it's very simple to setup, it lacks the support and/or documentation whereas LTSP is very good in it. Another sample is that he wants to connect a scanner to the client, I doubt it can be, since there's no documentation about it at all from the vendor.
Is there any fundamental difference between the two setups? Thank you.
The netboot package for version 5 of CentOS/Red Hat is not included in either distro, because it is broken. Attempts to get to a working known state are not looking to good. If using it on CentOS/Red Hat version 4, it will work.
Huge difference. Especially in the configuration files. DHCP.CONF is way different, as in you can add in options for each client. Version 4 of ltsp worked booting off of an ethetboot boot image, at least that is what worked for me. Had no PXE compliant NICs on the clients. Also in the client bits that get booted you have options to mount devices on the client machine. There's a configuration file for it. Like for instance you could specify to mount the scanner that is connected to the client. I have had no experiance in mounting devices like that with the netboot package. All you can do is try it and if don't work keep at it.
Using ltsp, the newest version you want be booting CentOS Bits. Will prolly be Ubuntu, Debian or Suse. If using the netboot package you will be booting CentOS/Red Hat Bits.
Both of the types in question export directories via NFS to the clients. Basically it just boils down to both of them doing the same deed, just a different type of setup situation.
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On Friday 18 April 2008 17:12:02 John wrote:
The netboot package for version 5 of CentOS/Red Hat is not included in either distro, because it is broken. Attempts to get to a working known state are not looking to good. If using it on CentOS/Red Hat version 4, it will work.
Luckily he still uses version 4.x
Huge difference. Especially in the configuration files. DHCP.CONF is way different, as in you can add in options for each client. Version 4 of ltsp worked booting off of an ethetboot boot image, at least that is what worked for me. Had no PXE compliant NICs on the clients. Also in the client bits that get booted you have options to mount devices on the client machine. There's a configuration file for it. Like for instance you could specify to mount the scanner that is connected to the client. I have had no experiance in mounting devices like that with the netboot package. All you can do is try it and if don't work keep at it.
In my testing, it boots vmware PXE client ok.
Both of the types in question export directories via NFS to the clients. Basically it just boils down to both of them doing the same deed, just a different type of setup situation.
I still have problem with user cannot logon from the diskless because the home directory is read-only. It seems that I have to state that /home/user/ must be writable in files.custom, still bumped though. Maybe my v4.2 has bugs on it.
What makes me frustated is that searching 'diskless' in the vendor knowledge base only returns 5 entries. Can you believe it?
Fajar Priyanto wrote:
What makes me frustated is that searching 'diskless' in the vendor knowledge base only returns 5 entries. Can you believe it?
Sounds, to me, like a good opportunity to fill that hole with a doc on the wiki.centos.org site, and get some attention around that.
btw, I am working on getting a cobbler package into mirror.centos.org for centos4 and 5. that would make a decent replacement for s-c-netboot
On Friday 18 April 2008 21:06:34 Karanbir Singh wrote:
Fajar Priyanto wrote:
What makes me frustated is that searching 'diskless' in the vendor knowledge base only returns 5 entries. Can you believe it?
Sounds, to me, like a good opportunity to fill that hole with a doc on the wiki.centos.org site, and get some attention around that.
btw, I am working on getting a cobbler package into mirror.centos.org for centos4 and 5. that would make a decent replacement for s-c-netboot
Nice to hear that, Karan. Looking forward for the good news. Thank you.
Fajar Priyanto wrote:
I still have problem with user cannot logon from the diskless because the home directory is read-only. It seems that I have to state that /home/user/ must be writable in files.custom, still bumped though. Maybe my v4.2 has bugs on it.
What makes me frustated is that searching 'diskless' in the vendor knowledge base only returns 5 entries. Can you believe it?
drbl is a nice package: http://drbl.sourceforge.net/
It can boot diskless clients a couple of different ways besides the clonezilla mode.
on 4-18-2008 1:38 AM Fajar Priyanto spake the following:
Hello all, I have a customer that insists of using upstream vendor's diskless (system-config-netboot) rather than LTSP. The reason is that he wants to use a 100% packages from the vendor, not from LTSP or any other party.
I try the vendor's diskless system, and although it's very simple to setup, it lacks the support and/or documentation whereas LTSP is very good in it. Another sample is that he wants to connect a scanner to the client, I doubt it can be, since there's no documentation about it at all from the vendor.
Is there any fundamental difference between the two setups? Thank you.
The big difference is that the LTSP package was set up to overcome the limitations of the pure upstream version.
Have a look at K12ltsp.org. They have a version based on Centos-5. Maybe it will fill your need.
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Fajar Priyanto -
John -
Karanbir Singh -
Les Mikesell -
Scott Silva