10/30/2000 -jam-

This is the LTSP Porting Guide.

We have attempted to design a foundation for porting LTSP to
any GNU/Linux distribution.


Porting LTSP to a new Linux distribution:

1) Modify the install.sh script to recognize the distro and
   the version.  There is a for loop and case statement near the
   top of the script that will attempt to figure out what
   distro/version you are running.  You will need to add code
   there to detect your version.

   There may be other changes required as well in this script.
   You'll need to look through the script to see if any changes
   are necessary. Places to check include:
   - The path of the CORBA directory (usally /etc/CORBA)
   - The path of the gtk config directory (usally /etc/gtk)
   - Paths of some X11 components

2) Use one of the DISTRO-VERSION.sh scripts as a guide for writing 
   a new templates-install script. The primary function of this
   script is to build the template scripts that will make the actual
   changes to the configuration files on the server.

   If you are just porting to a new version of an existing distro, you
   may be able to create a symbolic link to an existing 
   script and make the version specific changes inside of the script,
   conditional on the name of the script that was invoked.
   
   The actual scripts are named DISTRO.sh, where DISTRO is the name of
   the distro the script handles. For each version of the distro that is
   supported by the script a symlink with the name DISTRO-VERSION.sh
   exists. If a version (e. g. 1) of a distro (e. g. foo) is too different 
   to be handled by the same script as the other versions (e. g. 2 and 3), 
   you may create a new one. For example the script foo-1.sh handles 
   version 1, where foo.sh handles version 2 and 3 via the symlinks 
   foo-2.sh and foo-3.sh.   

3) Run the install.sh, which will in turn run the appropriate
   install_templates script.  Examine the template scripts in
   the /opt/ltsp/templates directory to make sure each script
   will do the right thing for that distro/version.


Requirements of the template scripts in the /opt/ltsp/templates
directory:

1)  The script should make a backup copy of the existing config files
    that it is about to modify. You will find some code for this in the
    existing scripts.

2)  The script MUST define the following variables:

       TARGET       This is the system config file that will be created/updated

       DEFAULT      The default answer to the question that ltsp_initialize
                    will ask.

       DESCRIPTION  A brief description of the action carried out by
                    the script.

    Those variables will be used by the ltsp_initialize script to display
    info on the screen before asking the user if they want that script
    to be run.

3)  The scriptname must end with .tmpl
