Fresh install: LTSP on Lubuntu 13.10: "Error: socket failed: connection refused"

[John Hupp]

On a fresh installation of Ubuntu or Lubuntu 13.10 and LTSP, the LTSP 
client fails to boot. After a good PXE boot, successful TFTP, and the 
splash screen, boot stops with the message "Error: socket failed: 
connection refused."

Then I'm dumped to the console at a working initramfs prompt.

I follow with the console messages, starting with the last message that 
one sees in a good boot, followed by all the bad messages:

Trying to load: pxelinux.cfg/default ok
mount: mounting /dev/nbd0 on /root failed: Invalid argument
/scripts/init-bottom/ltsp: line 27: panic: not found
chroot: can’t execute ‘/usr/bin/test’: No such file or directory
mount: mounting /root on /rofs failed: Invalid argument
mount: mounting /rofs on /root/rofs failed: Invalid argument
mount: mounting /dev /root/dev failed: No such file or directory
mount: mounting /sys on /root/sys failed: No such file or directory
mount: mounting /proc on /root/proc failed: No such file or directory
Target filesystem doesn’t have requested /sbin/init-ltsp.
No init found. Try passing init= bootarg.

BusyBox v1.20.2 (Ubuntu 1:1.20.0-8.1ubuntu1) built-in shell (ash)
Enter ‘help’ for a list of built-in commands.

(initramfs) _

-----------------------------------------------

This is on a fresh default installation of Ubuntu 13.10. I followed with 
this standard LTSP-PNP setup (using a single NIC):

sudo -i
add-apt-repository --yes ppa:ts.sch.gr
apt-get update
apt-get --yes install dnsmasq ltsp-server-standalone ltsp-client 
ldm-lubuntu-theme
ltsp-config dnsmasq
echo 'IPAPPEND=3' >> /etc/ltsp/update-kernels.conf
/usr/share/ltsp/update-kernels
ltsp-update-image --cleanup /
ltsp-config lts.conf

-----------------------------------------------

I modify the installation in just two ways:

1) To fix LTSP Client Boot Error: "PXE-E32: TFTP open timeout," in 
/etc/dnsmasq.d/network-manager replace the "bind-interfaces" line with a 
"bind-dynamic" line.

2) To fix Internet DNS Name Resolution broken by LTSP setup, edit 
/etc/dnsmasq.d/ltsp-server-dnsmasq.conf and comment out the port=0 line.

===============================================

Knowing now that the issue occurs under both Ubuntu and Lubuntu 13.10, 
it does not appear to be directly connected to the desktop environment 
or to any changes in the DE between 13.04 (where LTSP worked) and 13.10.

One person suggested that the kernel used in 13.10 might not support my 
network card, but when booting to the Live CD, the network card works fine.

Another person or two suggested that the problem was some issue between 
the NBD server and client, but so far I have no specific troubleshooting 
measures. On the server, 'sudo ps -a | grep nbd' shows that there is one 
instance of nbd-server running. 'Netstat -lt' shows that for tcp (the 
tcp6 results are irrelevant here, right?), listening is occurring at
*:9571
Dell-Ubuntu:domain
Dell-Ubuntu.loca:domain
localhost:domain
*:ssh
localhost:ipp

Has anyone else experienced this or found out what is wrong?