[Ltsp-discuss] Migrating LTSP chroot from Ubuntu Lucid to Ubuntu Precise server

[Matthew W. <ma...@gm...>]

I have been running my LTSP server on a Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 host. My clients are all fat clients using NBD.

I would now like to migrate my installation to a new server running Ubuntu Precise 12.04. I have set up a new Precise 12.04 chroot from scratch on the new server. It seems to be working fine.

My Lucid 10.04 server currently serves a Natty 11.04 chroot. I would like to continue to offer Natty 11.04 on the new server. I would prefer not having to set up a Natty 11.04 chroot from scratch on the new server because I have quite a bit of customization that I would have to repeat. 

I figured I could try merely copying the Natty 11.04 chroot from the Lucid 10.04 server to the Precise 12.04 server. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to work right out of the box. From the errors I get it looks like maybe either NBD and/or squashfs version differences between the two OS levels are causing the problem:

Lucid:
	nbd-server 2.9.14
	mksquashfs 4.0

Precise:
	nbd-server 2.9.25
	mksquashfs 4.2

When I boot the Natty image using the standard Lucid line ...

	KERNEL natty/vmlinuz
	APPEND ro initrd=natty/initrd.img nbdport=2000 init=/sbin/init-ltsp

… I get nbd0 I/O errors, but at least it seems to be talking to the NBD server. This makes me think it might be a squash problem.

When I boot the Natty image using a line copied from Precise ...

	KERNEL natty/vmlinuz
	APPEND ro initrd=natty/initrd.img root=/dev/nbd0 init=/sbin/init-ltsp nbdroot=:ltsp_natty

… I get an nbd-client syntax error.

So that's the background. Does anybody have any ideas how to go about achieving what I want, i.e. copying a Natty chroot from a Lucid server to a Precise server? I can think of two general approaches:

- Make some small changes in the Natty chroot, i.e. maybe install newer versions of nbd and alter the lines that mount the nbd.

- Do an ltsp-build-client for Natty and then copy in all the non-ltsp stuff from the Natty chroot I want to migrate.

Any suggestions?

--
Matthew