atamakosi

oh man. what a rough few weeks. anyway, i've finally gotten time to sit down and smack this around a bit. took a little time to work out some bugs and had to jump on the ltsp irc for a chat but it is up and functioning now with freerdp. For those that don't know, freerdp is now the default rdp client in ltsp. the first difference I noticed with freerdp is that it actually remembers the domain so that students no longer have to type domainname\studentuser to login to our Terminal server, just username now. but to save you fine people the pain of set up here is what i had to do: on a fresh install of ubuntu 12.04, i installed the ltsp-standalone-server openssh-server as before. removed isc-dhcp-server as it wasn't needed with our MS dhcp server doing the boot work. had to make some adjustments to a few config files here they are: sudo gedit /opt/ltsp/i386/usr/share/ltsp/xinitrc add this line below . /usr/share/ltsp/ltsp-client-functions export HOME=${HOME:-/root} i did try to setup nat as i read one user was having the same issue and this corrected it for him when using a virtual machine like my setup. install nat sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf uncommented the line net.ipv4.ip_forward=1 add entries to iptables the key i believe though is of course the lts.conf file. with freerdp you have to tell it to ignore network level authentication and certificates otherwise it'll hang. also adding a few other options helped the look. here is my lts.conf for reference: [DEFAULT] SOUND = True NBD_SWAP = True SCREEN_04 = ldm SCREEN_07 = xfreerdp RDP_OPTIONS = "--no-nla --ignore-certificate -z --gdi sw -f 172.16.0.12" SCREEN_08=xterm the first two options relate to the authentication and cert. -z is for compression i believe and most importantly --gdi sw is for the graphics. without this option it looks horrible on our clients. -f is full screen and the ip is for our internal terminal server. there we have it. it was rough going for me and frustrating at time so i hope this helps someone else out. thanks to alkis and variant over at ltsp for helping me out.

I think I will give FreeRDP a run this time. I've just finished reinstalling my ubuntu server.

so the 'upgrade' totally hosed the dhcp service. won't start no matter what I've tried so far. Will probably have to re-do the entire server. while looking at this how-to again, i can't seem to open Narendra's guide so I found a copy of it on isummation. Installing Ubuntu Server 11.04 64bit on Hyper-V - iSummation WebSite

I'm going to be attempting to setup shibboleth on our ubuntu server for single sign-on. Has anyone tried this and had success? One thing i'm curious about is how people have authenticated after passing the credentials from the login to, for example, google apps and then authenticating the user against data stored with the metadata provider? our users are created through our SMS in to AD, so is it possible to setup AD to provide this or must it be manually generated and stored as an .xml file some where accessable by shib? I'm having a mental block on one other issue with ubuntu. shib requires java so i've installed openjdk 7 and can run 'java' from terminal but shib gives an error about JAVA_HOME not being found. if [ -z "$JAVACMD" ] ; then if [ -n "$JAVA_HOME" ] ; then if [ -x "$JAVA_HOME/jre/sh/java" ] ; then # IBM's JDK on AIX uses strange locations for the executables JAVACMD=$JAVA_HOME/jre/sh/java else JAVACMD=$JAVA_HOME/bin/java fi else JAVACMD=java fi fi what should i need to setup for this to pass?

Wanted to give an update/warning. Upgrading from 11.10 to 12.04 broke my thin client setup. Maybe I was just unfortunate but the package upgrades created an error with my dhcp3-server and had to completely kill it out. Went as far as having to manually delete the cache files before it was able to reinstall properly. then found the thin clients giving an error message that i'm attributing to missing modules. tried updating client image, didn't work, so i've completely reinstalled ltsp-server-standalone and its currently rebuilding my i386 image. Hope no one else has to go through this...

I got this working through ISA 2006 using a web header filter. BUT the staff pretty much instantly rebelled at the idea. lol (just for the record I cleared this with our e-learning committee and they thought it was a good idea.)

thanks, good to know i'm not alone in this. Rejoining to the domain was the last thing I tried yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, the restart was taking ages so I left them to go overnight. (45+ minutes at 'Please wait')

Hi all, my school has around 75 netbooks currently all running a 32 bit version of win 7 enterprise. We've installed a ruckus wireless network with ruckus zd 1000 controller. The issue I'm having all over the school relates to logging on. The errors I'm getting reported and I've seen for myself are: The trust relationship between this workstation and primary domain failed. and There are currently no logon servers available to service the logon request. also, sometimes Not enough resources available to logon. From what I can tell, both point to not being able to talk to the DC. Sometimes a restart will kick out the problem and allow a student to use the netbook, sometimes not. I would say that it might be connectivity but our radius server has all domain computers allowed to connect and we have WAP's with cross-coverage in the rooms they are used. The one major change I've done recently is AD related. I've set our user accts to be created by our SMS, which had the unforeseeable side effect of renaming thebottom level OU the school computers are in. (went from internal.school.nz/My_High_School/Computers to internal.school.nz/MyHighSchool/Computers) just removed the underscores between the names but i've already caught some places this makes a huge difference. all the GPOs stayed with the correct OU's however so AD handled that correctly as just a rename and not recreating everything. If anyone can help me resolve this, I'd be forever in debt. this has been an issue since we purchased the netbooks in January but has just gotten worse.

same here. I've posted on the google forums under youtube for schools and awaiting a response. seems like they had this issue in january/february and it has reappeared.

I don't suppose you've experieince problems with students being unable to save? I'm getting a few teachers telling me that students can't save their work. (permissions denied issue) I've checked the user folder and the username has the correct permissions. (!?!)

Thanks for the reply, koffi2k. the main item I'm looking for is the usb redirection but have also noticed a hiccup with my current ltsp setup. Some thin clients appear to freeze after 10-15 seconds if the credentials aren't entered quick enough. strange right? I'm now curious if this is a problem with rdesktop now. Is it easy to replace rdesktop with freerdp on the ltsp server? We are a small school so any changes i make go directly on to the live server.

Checked out NTFSFix, unfortunately on a 2k8 server it wanted to download and install .NET 1.1. I wasn't too keen on this so I tried the batch script and looks like FN-GM's solution worked pretty well. The random folders I checked appear to have now matched with the corresponding usernames. Thanks a lot guys for responding and saving me hours of changing permissions!

Hi all, I've just made a transition in how our user accounts are being created at school. (previously it was all done manually and could be time consuming for myself and inefficient for any students enrolling, etc etc) Anyhow, I've implemented a handy little SMS script and service on our AD service that allows the SMS to create user accounts as soon as the student is enrolled. Now, I've just done a simple data transfer from the old Students$ folder to a new one (after recreating the permissions). I was hoping that AD would pick up all the users and re-add them to be owners of their folders. Unfortunately this hasn't happened. Rather than manually going through each, is there a way to force AD to match a profile with username 'smithj' in year 7 to the folder in Students$/Year7/smithj? This seems to be the only downside to this conversion and is just a one off really. cheers for any help!

@1steelhead: part of the reason I went with a linux solution was being unable to find a workable system for single sign-on. The solutions I tried never fully satisfied the requirements I wanted out of a thin client setup. Having to pre-install the thin clients with some operating system also made them dependent on the slow speeds of the machines hardware (these are at least 7 years old now that I'm working with.) Where as the PXE boot let them load in 15-20 seconds and ready for login a single time straight to the terminal server. But I tried using vbscripts to replace the explorer shell with mstsc or rdp+ but they all presented themselves with extra challenges. (configuring the rdp default file or setting the rdp+ to be deployed to all the thin client stations, having to do reg hacks, yada yada yada.) I've been where you are and found it a headache, only trying to save you the trouble too.

Hi All, Thought I might throw my hat in here as well. I'm the part-time tech/admin for a high school in the auckland region. I've lived in NZ for 3 years now originally from the States. Currently going to Uni for a second bachelors in Comp Sci. Cheers!

Does anyone know if it is possible to redirect local usb ports to an rdesktop terminal session?

sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Yes, I've set up the virtual server to be a pxe boot server for my thin clients. Like I said, it takes about 15-20 seconds to boot from the NIC pxe until at a login screen for the terminal server.

not to toot my own horn but i put my notes on here for this reason. I tried quite a few different ways to get a thin client to rdp in to a terminal server and this was easiest and works great. thin client boots in 15-20 seconds to the login screen and then the user gets access to all the apps and printers on the TS, etc. http://www.edugeek.net/forums/thin-client-virtual-machines/91361-how-setup-ubuntu-virtual-server-thin-clients-use-rdesktop-into-windows.html

I've wrestled this particular monster for a few weeks now and seeing as I've used sources from all over I thought I might be able to save someone else some time and trouble and post my 'how to'. Before I get into it: It took me a while to work through a variety of different methods to accomplish my goal. My goal was to create a thin client that would be able to boot off pxe and load into a remote desktop session with our terminal server that would maintain connection after a user logged out. I didn't want multiple sign on's or a desktop that a user could view/manipulate or the ability to cancel out of the terminal session. So here's what I did: 1. Install Ubuntu 11.10 on Hyper-V host running Windows Server. I found a great walk-through for this at Narendra Patel's site. It covered everything I needed, including the bain of my existence when trying to proof of concept on another box, the network interface. Getting Ubuntu to correctly use apt-get to install and update through an NTLM proxy was always a pain. But after following those instructions it works a treat. i can install all the necessary software and just manually change the browser proxy settings if i needed. 2. Install a remote desktop client on the server. (honestly i was getting tired of standing at the terminal in my server room.) i used sudo apt-get install xrdp. the only thing i needed to do was change the keyboard shortcut keys. ('D' was set to minimize all windows. i set it to Alt + D and moved on.) 3. Install LTSP. Awesome step by step found here at Mojotechblog. My setup was actually easier as i didn't need to make any changes to eth0 after following Narendra's guide. Briefly, it was: sudo apt-get install ltsp-server-standalone openssh-server gedit /etc/ltsp/dhcpd.conf and corrected the settings to apply to my network. ltsp-build-client –-arch i386 gedit /var/lib/tftpboot/ltsp/i386/lts.conf which created a conf file for my thin clients to use. I kept it fairly simple and added the following lines in: [default] RDP_OPTIONS = "-f -a 16" RDP_SERVER = TS_IP_Address_goes_here SCREEN_02 = rdesktop I found without the rdp options -a and 16 i'd get nothing but a black screen and white cursor. had to add -f to full screen it otherwise i got a box about 800 x 600 in the top left for the terminal session. 4. finally i just wanted to make sure it was all up to date across the board so i ran: sudo ltsp-update-image ltsp-update-sshkeys 5. and rebooted the server for good measure. that's all it took to set up my ltsp server for thin clients to boot straight into a terminal server session. Just a few things I didn't have success with: 1. Windows Thin PC. I thought this might have been easiest to use due to already running a windows network environment and just installing this to older machines. The problem was that it's speed was still very dependent on the system's crappy internals to boot and couldn't quite get an rdp session to open like i desired. I had the help of another edugeek member (Thanks for all the help, FN-GM!) wherein we tried using vbscripts to open a default.rdp preconfigured with the settings i wanted but that never quite worked. We also tried using RDP+ but that was a whole other headache to run. (however it did work great if you could get the scripts to work properly) But again this didn't fulfill my main requirements for a thin client so i moved on. 2. Thinstation. Sounds great when i first heard of it. can boot off pxe or etherboot, only 10-15mb img file, can add rdesktop in to the build. but for the life of me couldn't get it running. some of it was my fault (i manually created a 'tftpboot' folder on my ubuntu test box and pointed my dhcp to that when i should have installed ltsp and found the real tftpboot folder under /var/lib/ not in /) but even after realizing my mistake it wouldn't boot pxelinux.0 without missing 'diag' folder. I still have never seen that folder. I'm making an educated guess that it is on the full install image but again it wouldn't install on any of my test machines to allow me to copy that folder. once i had ubuntu ltsp up and running i realize how much easier it would be to just work with that and there we had it.

Now that I've enabled basic and integrated authentication, ISA seems to be doing fine handling the requests from mobile devices. (Except when Autologin is enabled on iOS devices. Freaking hates that for some reason so disable that and it will prompt for credentials.) I agree though, the main reason to keep it is for logs. With students able to connect personal devices the only insurance we have they aren't doing anything illegal that could get our school's internet disconnected (thanks copyright amendment act) is by tracking their usernames and web history in isa.

anyone? if i can get this darn diag folder i believe i'd actually have a working thin client. From what I've read it is supposedly in the boot-images folder that thinstation creates when you install it on a machine that serves as the pxe server too. but i can't get the iso to install on any machine due to my proxy causing a GIT fail. connecting straight into our cisco box doesn't work as i can't seem to find the correct command to change gateway settings in xterm on the thinstation gui.

I've enabled basic as well as integrated authentication in isa 2006 but still getting the same connection refused page....until I turned on wifi proxy within the internet browser settings! so couple changes and it appears to work now, hurray! thanks for the help thescarfedone. btw, I've found the firewall client works great. it even helped clear up issues with dreamweaver and other apps trying to negotiate through the proxy. we used to use a vbscript to switch proxy settings on and off and that worked fine but some people would forget if they left them on or not. firewall client doesn't need anything from the users.

On our staff laptops we use the isa firewall client to control the proxy connection but on the workstations on the network we just change the internet options to always have the proxy connection on by gpo. student's personal laptops and macbooks are able to handle the proxy connection fine. (i usually install the firewall client on laptops with permission of course to make it easy for them) it is all the other mobile devices, iphones, android phones, ipads, android tablets, etc. that hate authenticating with the proxy. are these working with your set up?

i'm pretty much just keeping a running list of errors here. I've discovered that in order for it to accept the ubuntu server as the primary pxe server, the wds service needs to be stopped on the MS servers. Once that is done it relies solely on the ubuntu machine for pxe boot. The error i now see is 'missing diag/vesamenu'. From what googling tells me, there should be a diag folder withing the pxelinux.cfg folder but again haven't been able to locate where this folder comes from. It wasn't generated by the ts-o-matic like the other files used for boot. (and if anyone is interested in setting this up on a linux machine don't forget to chmod 777 the tftpboot folder and add nobody as owner.) Does anyone know how to generate the diag folder i'm missing or where to obtain a copy of the files, assuming they are generic diag files and don't need to be specific for the build of course?

ok, i take that back. it was still attempting to boot from the wds instead of ubuntu. it would retreive the pxelinux.0 file from ubuntu server but then switched back to wds for loading the pxelinux.cfg files (??)