[X2Go-Dev] Automating the installation of the X2Go-TCE and the problems when trying to do so

[Arnold Krille]

Hi all,

I spent most of yesterdays working hours automating the setup of a 
TCE-nfs+tftp server. We use Chef (www.opscode.com) for that. And I will 
most likely publish the cookbook/recipe soon. The main reason I started 
this is that we want to automate more and more of the setup. And thus 
ease setting up our customers systems.

Two problems I encountered:

1) The x2gothinclient_create skript assumes interactive usage and has 
no option of running non-interactive. I adopted this by removing the 
single "read" (so it doesn't anymore ask for confirmation and by trying 
to set the locale without running "dpkg-reconfigure locales". So that 
part worked.

2) I got the client-machines (tested with a virtual machine and checked 
with an atom-based netbook) to boot of the pxe+tftp+nfs as wanted and am 
presented with x2goclient. But on the way there, the mouse and keyboard 
are lost and motivation on friday just before the weekend got a little 
low-point. Any tips where to look at what happened? Keyboard and mouse 
seem to be gone for good, I could neither move the pointer nor enter 
anything in x2goclient. Also I couldn't do Ctrl+Alt+F1 to switch to a 
text-console.

I also copied the x2gothinclient_shell-skript to create an 
x2gothinclient_execute which takes arguments and just executes these 
inside the tce-chroot instead of running an interactive bash. I don't 
know whether that is something I should prepare a patch for x2go for? It 
sure is very great for example for installing the kernel inside the 
chroot from the chef-recipe. And probably for other stuff I didn't yet 
need.

Have a nice weekend,

Arnold