LTSP 5 local devices fun

Been working on using LTSP 5 on a Kubuntu machine to replace our current LTSP 4 set up on debian. Part of this has been about getting local devices operational which, on the whole, works "out of the box" with the (k)ubuntu ltsp packages. The local devices appear under /media/ - which you could create a symlink to on the desktop for the users to easily access their devices.

However, I plugged in one of my USB memory sticks and nothing happened. So I went through the debugging routine:
Check that the device is partitioned (/dev/sdb1 rather than just /dev/sdb when plugged into my linux laptop)
Check that the ltsp workstation is seeing the device by logging into the local shell as root and using dmesg after plugging it in
Check the udev stuff is happening (look for an entry in /var/run/ltspfs_fstab)

That was where it was failing - no entry.

So I dug around in the udev rules and looked at the script that adds the entry to the fstab. Here was the source of the problem. This script uses the label on the volume to create the mount point and the volume label on my usb stick had a space in it - that was enough to prevent it from running the script properly.

So - if you want your removable media to work on a (k)ubuntu LTSP set up then make sure that any volume labels are without spaces.

Xming and KDE 3.5

I often want to use an Xserver under Windows for connecting to a linux host.

After quite a while of using cygwin to acheive this, I discovered Xming which is based on the same xwindow code but is packaged specifically for providing a windows Xserver. Much simpler to use than installing and configuring cygwin which invariably involves editing the PATH variable on the windows machine and creating a suitable launch icon.

However, if your window manager on the client is KDE, you may well find that if you enable the clipboard support then the Xserver will hang immediately after login using XDMCP.

The solution to this is to edit your gdm.conf file and add the line

KillInitClients=false

in the [daemon] section

Restart gdm and you'll find that you can login and all will work.

Internal modem on a Dell Inspiron 5100 under Linux

Following an incident where I was forced to use GPRS on my mobile to connect back to work I've finally got round to sorting out the modem connection on the Inspiron 5100 that I use for remote work so that I can use it under linux.

It comes with a PC Tel soft modem which doesn't just appear as a /dev/ttyS? port.

The solution is quite simple

apt-get install build-essential module-assistant sl-modem-source

m-a update
m-a prepare
m-a a-i sl-modem

apt-get install sl-modem-daemon

This detects the modem and symlinks it to /dev/modem