Re: Some notes on the next generation LTSP (getting LTSP into Debian/main)
Hi,
On Sat, 02 Jul 2005, Jim McQuillan wrote:
> One of my biggest concerns with the current integration of LTSP into
> Ubuntu is that it will be too slow at booting. There's an awful lot of
> ubuntu auto-detection going on, that requires Python and alot of other
> stuff. Whereas, the LTSP auto-detection is rather primitive, but very
> light-weight. I suspect the best methods lie somewhere in between what
> Ubuntu does, and what LTSP does, and it's going to take some time to
> sort that all out.
Please excuse a quick question/suggestion from an outsider looking in. If
it's slower, I presume the Ubuntu auto-detection is more robust and will
work for more hardware permutations which sounds good. Ubuntu's is pretty
good in my experience.
In that case, is there any possibility for the more complex auto-config
procedure to be used on the first boot and cached in some way rather than
be redone time and again? It sounds like /etc (or rather /) is mounted
over nfs with unionfs and customised for the thin client in question.
Perhaps at boot time a check could be done to see if the mac address is
known, and if any of its hardware has changed since last boot. If not, it
could copy in xorg.conf and so forth, skip the autodetection and boot
quickly. You might call it hardware pre-seeding.
I suspect this is not something that could be implemented in a short time
and so is probably only useful as a future idea. It sounds like this might
have to be hooked into the Ubuntu Installer (and therefore probably the
debian installer) which could be a big job but it might lend itself to
allowing Ubuntu Live CD users to save and restore their configs similarly
(say to floppy/usb key).
This may not make architectural sense, be too difficult or be just plain
nonsense in which case feel free to shoot it down.
Gavin
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