Features/K12Linux

K12Linux: LTSP5 for Fedora

Summary

Integration of LTSP5 to enable easy terminal server and thin client capability.

Owner

• Name: WarrenTogami

Current status

• Targeted release:
• Last updated: 2008-04-03
• Percentage of completion: 100%

Detailed Description

See K12Linux Home Page

Benefit to Fedora

In the past K12LTSP was based upon RHL and Fedora. It spread to thousands of schools worldwide and became a great success for Red Hat's technology in the education market. Unfortunately, it was based on the old LTSP-4.x which was impossible to integrate into Fedora, so it remained an external fork of the distribution maintained exclusively by Eric Harrison. More recently Canonical paid a full-time employee to work on LTSP, making self-hosted chroot-based thin clients possible. Ubuntu has since taken lead in the LTSP world with their Edubuntu flavor utilizing LTSP5. Meanwhile K12LTSP languished and Fedora's following among educators is beginning to fade.

LTSP5 for Fedora revives the success that was K12LTSP with modern technology and sustainability enabled by the Fedora Project's existing strengths.

Scope

Realistically, what needs to be done is either already in use by Edubuntu or K12LTSP (fairly easy), or a more general upstream kernel or X bug (we should be solving anyway). So the risk involved in going for this feature is small. It is merely a matter of doing the grunt work to do what other distros are already doing.

• Requires minor improvements to mkinitrd (partially accepted, more work needed).
• Requires minor changes to upstream LTSP5 to do things in distro neutral ways.
• Requires fixes to kernel/X/other packages that are usually always genuine bugs (not just for thin clients).

Test Plan

1. Setup must run with SELinux enforcing. 1. Install ltsp-server. 1. Run Terminal Server setup procedure. 1. Plug in thin client via ethernet. 1. Server runtime must run with SELinux enforcing. 1. Boot thin client.

• Does it boot?
• Does X work?
• Does sound work?
• Does USB stick/CD/floppy hotplug work?

1. Do all packages on the server survive RPM upgrade without wiping configs? 1. Do all packages in the client chroot survive RPM upgrade without wiping configs? 1. Does the client chroot yum update successfully with SELinux enforcing?

User Experience

• Server should be easy to setup.
• Any thin client should be able to boot without any server-side configuration.

Dependencies

• (./) dhcpd
• (./) tftp-server
• (./) pulseaudio (already in F8, used for network sound)
• (./) nbd (already in F8)
• (./) mknbi (already in F8)
• New Components, see K12Linux for more detailed descriptions.
• (./) ltsp-client
• (./) ltsp-server
• (./) ldm
• (./) ltspfs
• (./) mkdst (source repo manipulation and build testing tool)
• (./) mkelfimage

Contingency Plan

• Just don't ship it.

Documentation

• See K12Linux Home Page

Release Notes

• We have no auto-migration or clean upgrade path from from K12LTSP. A full reinstall is recommended to avoid conflicts.

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