LTSP GUI Management for openSUSE
Summary
LTSP(Linux Terminal Server Project) is growing to become a common phenomena and a number of organizations and schools have already begun deploying it as an alternate cost-effective solution against the expensive hardware one needs to purchase for a normal Lab setup. The goal of this project is to develop a GUI front-end to make the task of setting up the LTSP server on openSUSE systems easier than the usual command line way, which is not only difficult but also tedious for a normal openSUSE user.
Benefits
A GUI manager for LTSP will benefit the Administrator of LTSP Server a lot by making trivial things like building up the LTSP environment, managing LTSP configuration files and controlling the server a lot easier by reducing the activity to a few mouse clicks. Apart from that we also plan to include log monitoring from within the GUI implying that the resulting LTSP GUI manager would be more intuitive. Additionally, a centralized logging facility for Thin Clients along with remote user monitoring using italc are being considered for inclusion in this project.
Motivation
The LTSP-manager front-end from Ubuntu is our motivation for developing a similar and effective front-end for managing LTSP on openSUSE, and extensible to all the distributions supporting LTSP5.
Deliverables
a) A fully functional Graphical Interface which helps in setting up a functional LTSP environment
b) If applicable, try to reuse the existing Ubuntu's LTSP-manager
c) LTSP GUI for configuration and management of LTSP configuration files
d) Monitor and control Thin client activities
e) Make LTSP-Manager GUI via 1-click installation
Plan Ahead
i) Investigate the scope of reusing Ubuntu's LTSP-manager GUI
ii) If the Ubuntu's LTSP-manager is found to be suitable for our needs then try to make it work for openSUSE with major changes based upon openSUSE's KIWI-LTSP conventions
iii) If not then try to write the GUI from scratch using GTK+ using C and pipes for communicating with the command line installer
iv) Start the actual part of integrating the command line installer with the GUI to show progress status and the most important part "to make it workable"
v) After the GUI handles the primary part of installation and setting up of server, start including the functionality for additional configuration settings and tweak settings using check-boxes and other widgets
vi) Then we would try to integrate (if time permits) the additional features of centralised logging of Thin clients, Thin Client Sound and monitoring Thin Client boxes using italc
The project goals, scope of the deliverables and plans have been discussed in detail with the openSUSE LTSP maintainers at #opensuse-edu IRC channel where many new ideas are still being taken into consideration.
Qualification:
I am confident that I am the right person to carry out this project.
Personal: