On a Debian 4.0 (Etch) or newer system:

1. If you have a DHCP server already up and running on your network:

1. Otherwise, if you want your LTSP server to function as the DHCP server:

2. Build the LTSP client environment:

3. Configure /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf:

See examples in /usr/share/doc/ltsp-server/examples/dhcpd.conf and /etc/ltsp/dhcpd.conf and adapt to your network.

etch is still affected by: http://bugs.debian.org/416868

so you may need to add a line even if the dhcp server and tftp server are the same:

3. Alternately, configure /etc/dnsmasq.conf:

See examples in /usr/share/doc/ltsp-server/examples/dhcpd-dnsmasq and /etc/ltsp/dhcpd-dnsmasq and adapt to your network.

4. Configure /etc/exports:

5. Boot a PXE capable machine and enjoy.

Backported packages for etch

If you want to use newer LTSP related packages (with ltspfs and pulseaudio sound):

1. Add the key(s) for the repository to your keyring(after verifying that you trust them):

  1. wget http://pkg-ltsp.alioth.debian.org/debian/pkg-ltsp-keyring

  2. apt-key add pkg-ltsp-keyring

2. Add to /etc/apt/sources.list:

3. Update:

4. Install new packages:

5. When building a chroot, you'll need to tell it to use the backport sources:

 ltsp-build-client \   --extra-mirror "http://pkg-ltsp.alioth.debian.org/debian etch-ltsp-backports main" \   --apt-key /etc/apt/trusted.gpg

to get sound working with pulseaudio+alsa:

to get local devices working with ltspfs (usb sticks, cdrom, floppy):

1. echo fuse >> /etc/modules

2. modprobe fuse (or reboot your server)

3. adduser fuse USER

for some additional troubleshooting, try: http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebugLocalDev

Known issues with backports:

1. ldm: login screen shows white background (background image is hidden). no known workaround at this time.

2. ltspfs: mounts appear strange when running df. util-linux 2.13 fixed this bug, however is still present in etch. workaround is to make /etc/mtab a symlink to /proc/mounts: mv /etc/mtab /etc/mtab.old ; ln -s /proc/mounts /etc/mtab

if X doesn't automatically configure properly (it uses X.org's built-in configuration, which doesn't work as well on the version on X.org in etch), you may want to switch back to the slower but more reliable X configuration using xdebconfigurator:

1. chroot /opt/ltsp/i386 apt-get install xdebconfigurator

2. cp /opt/ltsp/i386/usr/share/doc/ltsp-client-core/examples/configure-x-xdebconfigurator.gz /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/

3. gunzip /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/configure-x-xdebconfigurator.gz

4. chmod +x /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/configure-x-xdebconfigurator

5. echo CONFIGURE_X_COMMAND=/etc/configure-x-xdebconfigurator >> /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/lts.conf

6. echo 'copy_dirs="$copy_dirs /var/cache/debconf"' >> /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/default/ltsp-client-setup

7. echo 'temp_copy_dirs=" "' >> /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/default/ltsp-client-setup