What's New in LTSP-4.1.1?

Enhancements

• X.org 6.8.2
  The latest release of X.org is now included in LTSP. This brings many updated drivers and enhancements. Take a look at www.x.org/XOrg_Press_Releases/X11R6.8.2.html for more Info.

• Xorg Composite extension
  The new feature in X.org called Composite can now be enabled in lts.conf by adding the following to your lts.conf file:

  
        X_COMPOSITE = Y
  

  This will give you support for things like drop shadows and transparent windows. It's a really cool looking feature, but the performance hit is staggering. You'll need the X Composite Manager (xcompmgr) to enable the features.

• 2.6.9 Kernel included
  We now have included a 2.6.9 kernel in the LTSP packages. We still don't have a simple way to configure swapping over the network. The NFS-Swap patch hasn't been ported to the 2.6 kernels yet, and while swapping over NBD can be used, we haven't had the chance to package it up for easy use within LTSP.

  This 2.6.9 kernel is provided for those people who need the additional capabilities that the 2.6 series brings, but the 2.4.26 kernel is still the officially supported kernel for LTSP.

• Hotplug support for USB devices
  LTSP now includes the ability to plug in your USB devices, such as memory sticks, floppy drives, harddrives and cdrom drives. Just add the setting

  HOTPLUG = Y

  to your lts.conf file, and that will activate the hotplug subsystem. Samba is then used to export those devices back to the server. Take a look at the LocalDrives Wiki Article for more information about how to make those drives available to your user session.

• lts.conf file now supports include directive
  You can now create config files for individual workstations, and then include them into your main lts.conf file. For example:

  
        [Default]
           SERVER = 192.168.0.254
           XSERVER = auto
  
        include /etc/lts.conf.ws001
        include /etc/lts.conf.ws002
        include /etc/lts.conf.ws003
  
        [ws004]
           XSERVER = i810
  

• Ability to pass options to the mount command
  Recently, we've seen problems with servers running a 2.6 kernel and gigabit network card talking 10mbit clients. The default NFS blocksize has been increased in the 2.6 kernels to 32kb. The older 10mbit clients can't re-assemble the fragmented packets fast enough, so timeout errors occur. This can be fixed by passing options to the client, to fine-tune the mount command. For example, if you are using Etherboot, you should add the following to your dhcpd.conf file:

  
         option option-128  e4:45:74:68:00:00;
         option option-129  "MOPTS=nolock,ro,wsize=2048,rsize=2048";
  

  You might also try throwing ,proto=tcp in there, to use TCP instead of UDP.

• DPMS Screen blanking options
  The X_DPMS option has been added to turn on/off the DPMS support in X.org 6.8.2. Also added several options to control the standby, suspend and off time. In summary, the new options for DPMS are:

  
        X_DPMS             = Y/N
        X_DPMS_STANDBYTIME = 
        X_DPMS_SUSPENDTIME = 
        X_DPMS_OFFTIME     = 
  

• USB Printers officially supported
  You could always use a USB printer with LTSP by telling lts.conf that the printer was a Parallel printer, and loading the printer kernel module. New with this release, you can specify PRINTER_x_TYPE = U in the lts.conf file. The printers kernel module will automatically be loaded

taken from
http://ltsp.sourceforge.net/ltsp-4.1.1.html