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map7
Asked: 2012-01-31 17:26:19 +0800 CST

LTSP overlays for fat-clients

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I've been using LTSP5.2 under Ubuntu for a while, mostly with mythbuntu. When I used to create a client image with the mythbuntu switches it created an overlay to store data for each client persistently over reboots. I could store any files in there I wanted specifically for that client.

Now that the mythbuntu switches are broken I'm going to use fat-client instead as they are maintained and work. However this does not create an overlay section.

Do I require an overlay section anymore?

Can I create one anyway? I found it good for putting settings in there per client.

Should I be using lts.conf instead?

Reference to the overlay which was in Mythbuntu 804: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV/Install/Hardy/Diskless

ltsp persistence

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Running a similar setup to yours, my solution was to place a script in /etc/init.d that configures each machine at boot. There is probably a better way to do this via lts.conf, but this works for my setup.

    Steps

    • Create different variations of configuration files (lirc, xorg, etc.) for each client
    • Store these different config files in the ltsp image with different names (lircd.conf.machine1, lircd.conf.machine2, etc.)
    • Create script that runs at boot, and copies appropriate config files to appropriate locations based on hostname
    • Run update-rc.d <script_name> defaults so the config script runs at boot

    Here's the script I use, feel free to customize to meet your needs (hostnames redacted, suggestions for improvement are always welcome). Note that machine specific xorg.conf files aren't stored in the image, it is just created at every boot using nvidia-xconfig:

    #!/bin/bash

# This script performs configuration of hardware
# specific components for HTPC frontends.
# log output to temp directory
exec > /tmp/htpc_config.log


# LIRC hardware and configuration
# files in place of defaults based on hostname. Required
# to automatically configure LIRC on machines with
# different hardware.
htpc_*****_suffix=".br"
htpc_*****_suffix=".lr"
lirc_hw_conf="/etc/lirc/hardware.conf"
lirc_conf="/etc/lirc/lircd.conf"

if [ "$HOSTNAME" = "*****" ]
then
    cp $lirc_hw_conf$htpc_*****_suffix $lirc_hw_conf
    cp $lirc_conf$htpc_*****_suffix $lirc_conf
    echo "Applied LIRC configuration for ***** frontend."
    service lirc restart
elif [ "$HOSTNAME" = "*****" ]
then
    cp $lirc_hw_conf$htpc_*****_suffix $lirc_hw_conf
    cp $lirc_conf$htpc_*****_suffix $lirc_conf
    echo "Applied LIRC configuration for ***** frontend."
    service lirc restart
else
    echo "Unable to match hostname $HOSTNAME."
fi

# Xorg.conf generation using nvidia-xconfig
xorgconf="/etc/X11/xorg.conf"

if [ -f "$xorgconf" ]
then
   echo "/$xorgconf exists, nothing to do."
else
   touch "$xorgconf"
   nvidia-xconfig -s
   echo "Generated $xorgconf using nvidia-xconfig."
fi
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