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

[Vagrant Cascadian]

On Thu, Aug 24, 2006 at 02:47:18PM -0300, Gustavo Franco wrote:
> 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

that's about it, although it also requires some hacking to get ltsp not
to spawn ldm, sdm, or "X -query SERVER" on the terminal. gotta fix that.
it's in client/ltsp_config, and makes it a pain to get it working with
some other x-display-manager.
 
> 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;

sounds good. though i think you mean "tasksel install <task(s)>"?

i can write up a basic task plugin for this part.

> - 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.

well, using ldm doesn't really allow us to run the applications locally,
or do any sort of local authentication... though that would be some
interesting hooks to ldm :)

that's a more complicated case than i was intending to provide.

i was mostly looking at a basic kiosk-like setup in which you have an
unauthenticated autologin on the terminal itself, and the server is just
a read-only NFS server at that point. but i do like the idea of a
"tasksel" hook.

live well,
  vagrant