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[Alkis Georgopoulos <1048699@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Colin,

older ltsp-client versions were looking for a (chroot)/etc/ltsp-chroot file, and if they didn't find it, they aborted the installation. That file was put there by older ltsp-build-client versions. That's why running ltsp-build-client on 12.04 to generate an 8.04 chroot doesn't work.
You could work around that by creating a plugin in (server)/usr/share/ltsp/plugins/ltsp-build-client/... that creates that file.

But that's the least of your problems.

The squashfs format was changed between 8.04 and 12.04. So, you won't be
able to run `ltsp-update-image` from 12.04 on a 8.04 chroot, the client
initramfs won't be able to mount it. You'd have to keep an 8.04 ltsp
installation around just to be able to run ltsp-update-image there, and
then transfer the result to your 12.04 server.

And that's not all.

In 12.04, nbd-server is now using the IANA assigned port 10809 instead
of the old 2000. But it also uses "name based export" instead of "port
based exports", which means that nbd-client communicates with the server
with a different protocol. To work around that, you'd have to emulate
the old port-based behavior by running nbd-server with different
parameters, just for that chroot.

So I'll mark that bug as "won't fix", I don't see any easy ways to solve
those problems, especially the squashfs one.

On a side note, we have many ancient labs here ourselves, so if you want, mention the specific problems you have with the older hardware, maybe there are workround to run 12.04 (or 11.10 chroots) on them.
Also, for 486 machines (no PAE support etc), the easiest path might be to create a wheezy debian chroot (which is compatible with 12.04) and transfer it to 12.04, and then maintain it there.

** Changed in: ltsp (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Won't Fix

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1048699

Title:
  ltsp-build-client fails when specifying old distros

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