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So, I've used Ubuntu for years and am good at finding solutions, but I'm completely stumped and the help I can find presumes that I know where these files are.....

I set up 2 clients as thin clients and managed to get everything working, but the response time was too slow while trying to use the thin clients, and without multimedia like youtube, it is useless for my purpose. So, I decided to give a fat client a try. Having done a ton of stuff, I wiped and reinstalled Ubuntu 16.04LTS and started a fat client install process.

So, I've followed these steps ( https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuLTSP/FatClients ) to set up a fat client so I can have 2 clients connect to a server in my home.

The "Localization" part lost me, but it looks like stuff I don't care about as the people using the clients just want to surf the web and check email.

I was able to create the debconf.seeds file with no problems.

I don't use Oneiric, so I didn't care about the next part.

I built the client (yeah, that took a long time) and all seemed ok. I hook everything up to test it and I get error PXE-e53 No Boot Filename received.

Now, as a thin client, this could connect and load, but now as a fat client I get this error. I did some searching and found references to lts.conf and dhcpd.conf files and I cannot find them anywhere. Could those files be why I get this error?

If so, what should be in these files and where should I create them? The help I find online presumes that I know what I'm doing with this stuff and, while I'm quick on the uptake, networking is NOT my strongsuit.

2 Answers 2

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I first got confused because a fat client is usually not what LTSP calls it. A Fat client is a traditional PC, with local HDD containing the OS and applications etc.

LTSP's "fat clients" are actually "Fit Clients" : no local HDD but everything still runs locally. Your Fit client mounts its partitions from the remote server and runs it from there.

Your ex-thin client tries to PXE boot. I guess your Fit/Fat client must also PXE boot. So it must get an IP configuration from a DHCP/PXE server. This configuration must have an IP adress, netmask etc. as well as a "network boot file name" (dhcp option 66, sometimes named "filename" in dhcpd.conf or bootpd.conf) and, optionally, a TFTP server IP address (named "next-server" in dhcpd.conf or bootpd.conf) to download the boot file name from. If no TFTP server is given, the client usually assumes that the DHCP/PXE Server is also the TFTP server.

All this is done with your DHCP or PXE Server configuration. And if there is another DHCP/PXE server on the network (for instance the one in your cable/DSL gateway), this DHCP server will not send the needed details to your clients. But a PXE server can. PXE Servers are also named proxy DHCP servers.

The PC running LTSP server can then act as a DHCP server or PXE Server and provide the correct details. If you installed ltsp-server-standalone (and not ltsp-server), there should be a dhcp server with the package. You must then make sure that you restarted the networking and dhcpd services :

sudo service networking restart
sudo service ltsp-server restart
sudo service isc-dhcp-server restart
sudo service dnsmasq restart

(I don't know how ltsp-server-standalone package manages DHCP and/or if you installed.configured a particular dhcp server. It could use isc-dhcp-server, dnsmasq or something else. You may have to run or update your config using ltps-config as mentionned here: http://wiki.ltsp.org/wiki/Ltsp-config ).

It seems that the dhcp server conf could be here (if you use isc-dhcp-server) :

/etc/ltsp/dhcpd.conf

and if you use dsnmasq, try to locate dnsmasq.conf (can be in /etc/ltsp/dnsmasq.conf or /etc/dnsmasq.conf)

What's sure is that you must make sure that the Fit client gets its network boot file name right.

So you must find out what dhcp server is supposed to provide IP addresses. If another dhcp server runs on your network, you should run dnsmasq as your PXE Server (AKA DHCP Proxy). Check this page for more insights for instance : https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuLTSP/ProxyDHCP

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  • I'll not be able to try this until this weekend, but I'll see what happens. The link I gave shows the process steps I went through. The units have a hard drive, 4gb ssd I believe. It's just a matter of making things work. And now I need to get this done before the 10th, which is when we move.
    – LKates
    Mar 7, 2017 at 17:56
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  • The error you got seem from its code is generated by PXE ROM of the network adapter:

    PXE-e53 No Boot Filename received
    

    It couldn't get filename of PXE bootloader from DHCP server (ie: pxelinux.0).

  • The default setup of LTSP depends on isp-dhcp-server which looks first configuration file:

    /etc/ltsp/dhcpd.conf
    

    If it doesn't exist, it drop to its own:

    /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf
    

    For reference read this comment in

    $ more /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf
    
    #
    # Sample configuration file for ISC dhcpd for Debian
    #
    # Attention: If /etc/ltsp/dhcpd.conf exists, that will be used as
    # configuration file instead of this file.
    
  • The only exception if this was modified:

    $ more /etc/default/isc-dhcp-server
    
    # Path to dhcpd's config file (default: /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf).
    #DHCPD_CONF=/etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf
    

    Or you are using another DHCP server (which already took the listening port)

Some debug hints:

I would recommend to check if DHCP server is running and correctly configured, add more info to the question if you want more help:

sudo netstat -lunp

more /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf

You may also try to debug it using dhcpdumpand dhcping -V

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  • I'll not be able to try this until this weekend, but I'll see what happens. The link I gave shows the process steps I went through. The units have a hard drive, 4gb ssd I believe. It's just a matter of making things work. And now I need to get this done before the 10th, which is when we move.
    – LKates
    Mar 7, 2017 at 17:56

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