How to use Lessdisks with Debian-edu
------------------------------------

$Id: debian-edu-lessdisks 4079 2005-07-18 16:05:22Z vagrant-guest $

What is Lessdisks
-----------------
Lessdisks (http://lessdisks.net/) is a tool for setting up diskless
computers using normal debian-packages. It was developed to continue to use
older hardware, much like LTSP, that we use in debian edu. 

What makes Lessdisks differ from LTSP
-------------------------------------
Lessdisks uses normal Debian packages, where LTSP (from version 4.x) is
built from source. There are some benefits from both solutions, 

LTSP is in fact a binary distribution, and this makes it very easy to
install on cross platform. It is rather easy to install LTSP for i386
clients on a PowerPC server. it is also rather easy to install on a windows
server, provided that you have a tftp-server and NFS-server running. But if
you want to install a new application, you will have to build it in the LTSP
build environment, and this is a rather huge task. I don't expect to find
applications like KDE, OpenOffice and Mozilla to be built for the LTSP
platform. But then again - LTSP is a linux Thin-client Server project, and
are expected to work with an Application server. 

Lessdisks on the other hand uses normal Debian Packages, which like the LTSP
packages are binary, but since Debian has more applications available, there
are more packages to choose from. But because of the way debian-packages are
built, you do need to have the same architecture on both the server and the
clients (at least for now). But since we have more applications available,
we have the possibility to add everything on the client. You could even use
the lessdisks client as a server for more lessdisks-clients :) 

Another thing is that when using LTSP, you install the packages on the
server, but when using lessdisks, you install the packages in a chroot
environment. the chroot still exists on the server, and it's easy to work
directly on the server root and not in the lessdisks-chroot.


Installing Lessdisks the lessdisks way
--------------------------------------
A normal lessdisks installation is done by
 # First fetch the lessdisks server part, which will ask you a bunch of
 # questions
 apt-get install lessdisks

 # install the chroot environment
 lessdisks-install
 
 # you may choose to configure using lessdisks-configure, but it is poorly
 # maintained, and should probably not be used.

 # to configure a specific terminal after the installation is done, you may
 # run lessdisks-setup. 
 lessdisks-setup
 

During this installation you are asked what you want to install, and you are
given the choice to set up:
  xterminal - a replacement for LTSP, using lessdisks, but uses
              configuration tools from LTSP.
  sdm - kind of secure xterminal. 
  cloner - This is used to clone installations. 


Installing Lessdisks the Debian-edu way
---------------------------------------
One of the goals of Debian-Edu is to ease the installation, by giving
reasonable defaults for the packages that are to be installed.
Therefor Lessdisks has been tuned, and for the installation script to work,
you need lessdisks 0.6.2a+cvs.041130.183321 or later. 
The script is started with the command 
 /usr/lib/debian-edu-install/debian-edu-lessdisks <argh>
where <argh> is replaced with 
 workstation - to get a working workstation installation
 xterminal - to use as a LTSP replacement. 

The xterminal profile of debian-edu-lessdisks is not well tested, and later
versions would have better support.


Maintaining a Debian-edu-lessdisks-workstation
----------------------------------------------
What's important is to remember that the lessdisks installation lives a life
of it's own. The same applies to the diskless workstation. You will
experience that some logs will fill up the disk space, and such. This is work
in progress, and you may need to tune some stuff. 

What's important is that whenever you do changes to the lessdisks chroot,
that you use the command 
 lessdisks-chroot

Or if you want to use apt-get within the chroot, you may use the command
 lessdisks-aptget instead.
