[Pkg-ltsp-devel] Bug#509640: ltsp-server: confusing out of the box experience

[Ross Boylan]

Package: ltsp-server
Severity: normal

I just installed this package, and there were a lot of things that seemed odd or confusing.

The reference to /opt in the package installation and man
ltsp-build-client seemed odd, because Debian doesn't use that (not
sure abou FHS).  I thought the defaults when I ran it would be
different, but they weren't.

No /etc/ltsp directory was created by the installation.  I created it
and made ltsp-build-client.conf:

dist=testing
mirror=debian.betterworld.us
base=/var/ltsp

This was a guess; I found no syntax specification for the file.  The
man page seems to imply the command-line options can go in the file
("If present, defaults will be read from the configuration  file
/etc/ltsp/ltsp-build-client.conf, and will be overridden by using the
command line options."), but it didn't work.

It's not clear to me to what extent I need an lts.conf with the
parameters in /usr/share/doc/lts-parameters.txt.gz if the server is
the machine I'm building on.  Also, is the config file lts.conf (as it
says in the parameter file) or ltsp.conf?

I'm not using 192.169.168.0.1; again, it's not clear to me exactly
what I need to change, or if it's detected automatically (QuickInstall
says if you change IP addresses you should run ltsp-update-sshkeys,
but doesn't mention anything else--and I'm not changing anything).

man ltsp-build-client uncertainties:
Does this need to be run as root? (yes)

Do "mirrors," "packages", and "distribution" refer to the usual Debian
things of that name, or is it some upstream concept? (apparently
Debian)

If I change base do I need to tweak the clients, or is that automatic?

To try to summarize what I think would help:
1. build an /etc/ltsp directory and populate it with sample config
files, if appropriate (that is, if packages are supposed to create
their /etc/ directories).
2. Change the default chroot to something more Debianny,
e.g. /var/ltsp if appropriate (policy consistent).
3. Provide more of an overview.
4. Provide more details in the man pages, including the format of the
configuration files (I found ltsp.conf configuration on the web, but
nothing for the builder).
5. Use ltsp consistently for file names (or lts).

There's probably a lot I'm misunderstanding, but it would be nice if
it were easier to understand :)

I'm also a little puzzled that both nbd-server and a tftpd server are
necessary (and an nfs server), though I'm willing to take it on faith.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 5.0
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (990, 'stable'), (50, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-1-686 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash