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LTSP notes

Jon Trulson Antonis Tsolomitis
Attachments
usb-active1.png (2070 bytes)
usb-active2.png (14713 bytes)

1st: In LTSP the lightdm login manager expects that the desktop sets the default root cursor (the mouse pointer). Since CDE does not do this, the cursor stays in the "busy" state with a rotating icon when the cursor is on the background image. To fix this, add the following line in your $HOME/.dt/sessions/sessionetc file (and make sure this file is executable):

xsetroot -cursor_name left_ptr

and restart the session.

2nd: The Xserver must know of your fonts and font aliases. On a standalone system this is done automatically by CDE as it starts. But the problem with LTSP is that the Xserver runs on the thin client but CDE runs on the LTSP server, and the mechanism that sets the aliases does not work. So one solution is to manually add a FontPath line to the chroot tree of ltsp.

We install the fonts we are aliasing to and the fonts.alias, in the choot environment.
We assume that the chroot tree is an i386 one. Otherwise replace i386 with amd64 below.
For Ubuntu and using the default font aliases that point to mscore fonts, we do:

sudo /bin/bash
chroot /opt/ltsp/i386
apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer
exit
mkdir -p /opt/ltsp/i386/usr/dt/config/xfonts/
cp -r /usr/dt/config/xfonts/* /opt/ltsp/i386/usr/dt/config/xfonts/

Modern systems do not have an /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. Instead the configuration is placed in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/

chroot /opt/ltsp/i386
cd /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/

(or cd /etc/X11/ on old systems)
create here a file named 99-cde.conf (or xorg.conf on old systems) with contents:

Section "Files"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/truetype/msttcorefonts/"
FontPath "/usr/dt/config/xfonts/C/"
EndSection

where the C above can be changed to your language if its is supported (check the contents of /usr/dt/config/xfonts/)

Having root priviledges we recreate the ltsp image:

ltsp-update-image

Now CDE should load properly on the thin clients (provided that your fonts.alias are tested to work on a standalone system).

3rd The LTSP server mounts usb keys attached to the thinclient at the server's location

/media/$USER

We take advantage of the capabilities of the CDE panel's controls to watch for a file, in order to get notified that a usb key has been mounted and easily navigate to the correct directory.
First create the file 

/etc/dt/appconfig/types/C/ltsp-usb.fp

(or use your language instead of C) with contents:

CONTROL MonitorUSBkeys
{
   TITLE MonitorUSBkeys
   TYPE file
   CONTAINER_TYPE       SUBPANEL
   CONTAINER_NAME       Home
   POSITION_HINTS       last
   FILE_NAME    /media/$USER
   MONITOR_TYPE file
   ICON USBdrivedisconnected
   ALTERNATE_ICON USBdriveconnected
}

You obviously need the icons stated above. Get them from here and put the icons in 

/etc/dt/appconfig/icons/C/

When a usb key is inserted in the thinclient, the arrow on the HOME subpanel becomes yellow. Thus you get notified that the state of the usb control inside the subpanel has changed. Opening the subpanel you may check the the icon also has changed, a yellow vertical bar has appearred to the left of the icon, and clicking on it Dtfile opens in /media/$USER location.
You may see the screenshots here:


Related

Wiki: CustomisingCDE