Google Summer of code at Debian Final Report

Deepanshu
5 min readOct 11, 2018

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Google Summer of code 2018

Table of contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Final Summary
  3. Deliverable
  4. Weekly reports & Blog posts
  5. Other contributions
  6. Thank you

Introduction

Virtual LTSP server project automates installation and configuration of LTSP server with vagrant. It is the easiest way to create LTSP setup. We have developed the project to do the same for Linux mint 19 and Debian 9. We also created several scripts for testing, create ltsp client, manage accounts, etc. Also created packer scripts to create vagrant boxes that we will use in the project.

Final Summary

Google Summer of Code was a great opportunity to work with really smart and amazing people. I learned a lot in the process. It took my understanding of Vagrant, bash-scripting, packer, ltsp, Debian packaging to a whole another level. I started with a basic provisioner script to install ltsp to vagrant box. Then we make several improvements in it.

Later made several features and improvements in it. After that a major issue was the client was unable to boot. In order to solve this issue I searched through all the content on the internet about ltsp. Even asked the active developers of ltsp on how to fix this issue. They have been working on ltsp since 2006 but they haven’t encountered this problem yet. After struggling for lots of I solved it! Looking at the complexity and the time it took mentors told me to write a separate blog post about it. We have also created Virtual ltsp server for Debian 9. Also one for linux mint 19.

I had to create a new linux mint vagrant box with xfce. Which was really fun. I also automated its creation with packer scripts. We also did port from Edubuntu packages to Debian. It is locally built and installed via a small script. In the end, we added features like automatic login, guest login, and several scripts to optimize the workflow for the user. This was a really short summary of the work done. More details can be found on the weekly reports.

Deliverables

Virtual LTSP Server

Pull request made

Commits made

  • bionic branch —
  • buster branch —

Issues worked on

Packer scripts to create vagrant box

Linux mint tara vagrant box

Ported edubuntu packages from ubuntu to debian

Documentation

Weekly reports & Blog posts

  • Week1:
  • Week2:
  • Week3:
  • Week4:
  • Week5:
  • Week6:
  • Week7:
  • Week8:
  • Week9:
  • Week10:
  • Week11:
  • Week12:

Other contributions

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=905006

Thank you

I am very thankful to Google and Debian for accepting me to Google Summer of Code. Working for GSoC was an amazing experience. I will definately participate next year as well.

Thank to my mentors Dashamir Hoxha and Akash Shende for their solid support, quick response, patience and trust on me.

Thank you Daniel Pocock for encouragement and Big thanks to Debian, ltsp, Vagrant community for being very helpful.

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Deepanshu

GSoC 18 debian | Nullcon 2018 Volunteer | CSE UnderGrad