Package: debian-edu-config Version: 2.11.56+deb11u1 Severity: important Hi, bug #995610 has been reported concerning possibly missing firmware when doing PXE installations on real hardware. Same applies to LTSP thin clients and diskless workstations, but this issue slipped my attention, too. (No real hardware available, VMs only.) As of now, after generating the SquashFS image for thin clients, the related chroot is removed. Updating the image after possible package upgrades is done via running chroot creation from scratch again; reason has been to don't bother unexperienced admins to deal with chroot issues (like temporary files, proc and devpts). Installing firmware packages inside the thin client chroot would even require to adjust the sbin/debian-edu-ltsp-install tool (after having copied it to /usr/local/sbin). Unexperienced admins would be left w/o a clue if LTSP client boot fails in case of network cards needing firmware. The new LTSP (as of bullseye) has an approach different to LTSP5 which shipped a dedicated tool to create and maintain chroots. Such a tool should be available for Debian Edu 11. In addition, a tool allowing to easily install firmware packages in LTSP chroots should be available. LTSP chroot creation and maintenance for diskless workstations should be possible (as opposed to creating the SquashFS image from the LTSP server's file system). It would allow one to generate dedicated client images with possible needed firmware w/o spoiling the LTSP server filesystem by installing them there. This would also be a secure fix for #993935 (privacy issues for combined servers). Unexperienced admins can't be expected to copy the sbin/debian-edu-ltsp-install tool to /usr/local/sbin and adjusting the exclude list to site specific needs. The sbin/debian-edu-ltsp-install tool (and some others) would need related adjustments. Related manual pages need to be adjusted/added. A wrapper tool for the 'ltsp ipxe' command needs to be added to allow one to easily update the iPXE menue after changing the default netboot menue item after /etc/ltsp/ltsp.conf file edits. All above mentioned changes are already in unstable (with fixes in Git). Once tested, these should go into bullseye-pu. Wolfgang
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature