Hello and KDE on LTSP

[Andrew Scott]

Hi Andrew

Welcome to Edubuntu!

[Andrew] Thank you - hope that I can contribute in some way :) Please forgive
the unusual quoting style; I have opted for a digest email format, and and
copy-pasting from the archives as the email hasn't arrived yet :P


On Thu, 2006-07-06 at 22:21 +0100, Andrew Scott wrote:
> #1: Any idea how I can find / get hold of system logs for the client as it
sets
> up? Debugging is a mite difficult without this ...

For debugging, I usually set up the root user in the thin client chroot:
$ sudo chroot /opt/ltsp/i386 passwd

You can then set a root password for the chroot environment. On the thin
client, you can then press ctrl+alt+F1 to get to a virtual terminal and
troubleshoot, alt+F7 will get you back to LDM.

[Andrew] Thank you for the tip and setting the root passwd seems to be the way
to go. However I may also like to inspect dmesg and syslog for bootup events -
where are these stored?


> back up again, and lo and behold the client works perfectly again. So I'm
> hypothesising that LDM never dies, just fades away, and cannot be
reincarnated.
> Thoughts?

This sounds strange, if you do find out what is causing it, please let
me know. Sounds like it might be a bug.

[Andrew] No more of a bug than a problem between the keyboard and chair - as
Nigel had reminded me, I had forgotten about the good ol' VTs :) Control-Alt-F7
and all is well.

Many moons ago I used to have great fun running 'screen' in multiple VTs and
confusing the heck out of non-Linux aware acquaintances :)

*HOWEVER* I do think that the client should be selecting the 7th VT as
necessary each time it boots up; instead, the second and subsequent time, it
selects the wrong one. Does *that* sound like a bug?


> #3: [As per the tag line] Logging in on LDM brings me in to Gnome desktop.
> Gnome is nice, but I want KDE. How can I get KDE? I tried chrooting to
> /opt/ltsp/i386 and 'apt-get install kubuntu-desktop' but of course just
messed
> up my install and had to wipe and rebuild using ltsp_build_client. What am I
> missing?

You can use:
$ sudo chroot /opt/ltsp/i386 update-alternatives --config
x-session-manager
Then choose the option that says kde-session.

[Andrew] I've just done that, from an LTSP session. Results:

$ sudo chroot /opt/ltsp/i386 update-alternatives --config x-session-manager
Password:
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
        LANGUAGE = "en_GB:en",
        LC_ALL = (unset),
        LANG = "en_GB.UTF-8"
    are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
No alternatives for x-session-manager.

What am I missing here? Please remember I do not have kubuntu-desktop installed
in the chroot because of the horrible things it did the last time around. But I
should not really need it, it's just picking the right direction to go surely?


> #4: The LDM is very plain and is not intuitive for my family to use. I would
> like a faces theme, preferably human-list. How can I arrange for this to
> happen? Logging in to a client should present the same experience as logging
> into the main machine.

LDM has greatly improved in the last version, and more major
improvements are planned, although a faces list is highly unlikely for
the Edgy version. Perhaps after edgy this could happen, it's also
possible that GDM will allow ssh tunnelled logins in the future, which
means that you could use GDM with Ubuntu LTSP.

[Andrew] Thank you, and I appreciate the effort and hard work being put in
here. What would it take to make a faces theme available on LDM? The reason I
keep asking is that a basic requirement of a successful thin client system is
to make the user experience the same wherever they log in from, as far as is
possible.

> #5: I would like sound on my clients. I've read all the Ubuntu LTSP docs, and
a
> few more besides. Yes, I am running artsd, and no, I will not be changing my
> basic sound architecture after having got it all working on the main machine
> otherwise my death will be long slow and painful.

As you wish. :)

[Andrew] I am afraid I must have missed something here. How can I have artsd
and LTSP playing nice with each other - any experiences here?

-Jonathan


		
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