This section is for advanced LTSP sysadmins. Let's suppose that you want to test if your users would
prefer Xubuntu to your existing Ubuntu MATE. First, move and rename your Xubuntu CD to this location,
without using symlinks, and then update kernels and ipxe:
mv xubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso /srv/ltsp/images/xubuntu-18.04.img
ltsp kernel xubuntu-18.04
ltsp ipxe
If you reboot your clients, they'll now have the option to boot with the Xubuntu live CD in LTSP mode!
This is like booting with the live CD, except that all the users and their homes are available! So the
users can normally login and work for days or weeks in the new environment, before you decide that they
like Xubuntu and that you want to move from using the live CD to maintaining a Xubuntu image using a
virtual machine.
You can also do this with virtual machine images! For example:
mv ~/VirtualBox\ VMs/debian/debian-flat.vmdk /srv/ltsp/images/debian-vm.img
ln -rs /srv/ltsp/images/debian-vm.img ~/VirtualBox\ VMs/debian/debian-flat.vmdk
ltsp kernel debian-vm
ltsp ipxe
These commands move your "debian" VM to the LTSP images directory, symlink it back to where VirtualBox
expects it, and update the kernels and ipxe. After these, you'll be able to boot directly from the
"debian-vm" iPXE menu item without having to run ltspimage! It's the fastest way to test image changes
without waiting 10 minutes for ltspimage each time.
Some advanced users may think of using the opposite symlink instead:
ln -rs ~/VirtualBox\ VMs/debian/debian-flat.vmdk /srv/ltsp/images/debian-vm.img
Unfortunately NFS doesn't follow symlinks outside of the exported directories, so the clients wouldn't be
able to boot in this case. Advanced users may use bind mounts though, e.g.:
mount --bind ~/VirtualBox\ VMs/debian/debian-flat.vmdk /srv/ltsp/images/debian-vm.img