localapp plugin (was Re: [Pkg-ltsp-devel] features of the week)

[Gustavo Franco]

On 8/24/06, Vagrant Cascadian <vagrant at freegeek.org> wrote:
> so, this week i worked on a few new features:
> (...)
> i also worked on a simple plugin to create diskless workstations,
> running all the applications locally, rather than connecting to a
> server. essentially, it amounts to installing the desktop profile with
> tasksel, adding a user, copying home into the tmpfs on boot, adding
> /var/lib/gdm to the tmpfs, and tweaking gdm.conf to do autologin. i
> don't have it cleanly implemented in a branch yet, but it's pretty
> simple. something fancier with authenticated login and such is
> definitely possible, but obviously much more complicated :)

Hi Vagrant,

Let me understand the plugin internals, step by step:
- Run 'tasksel install desktop' into the chroot
- Add user and copy home into the tmpfs on boot there
- Add /var/lib/gdm to the tmpfs
- Tweak gdm.conf by hand to do autologin

I think we can try:
- Let the user opt which tasks he wants to install passing them as
argument to the ltsp-build-client (we can suggest desktop,
gnome-desktop | kde-desktop) ;
- Run 'aptitude install <task(s)>' into the chroot;
- Be sure that xdm|kdm|gdm won't be in our way;
- Let ldm do the authentication job into the server

This way, the ltsp server admin would need to add regular users in the
server and let them authenticate in the thin-clients. If he needs
autologin he can burn ldm, and use kdm|gdm configuring it manually,
IMHO.

Thoughts?

> (...)

regards,
-- stratus