What is the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) website?

Updated

ltsp.org is the home of the Linux Terminal Server Project, an open-source project that netboots LAN clients from a single template installation. That template can live in a virtual machine image, in a chroot on the LTSP server, or directly in the server root (a "chrootless" setup). The practical result: maintaining tens or hundreds of diskless clients is about as much work as maintaining one PC. If you want to run thin or diskless clients on a local network without imaging each machine individually, this is the project to look at.

What LTSP actually does

Instead of giving every client its own operating system install, LTSP boots clients over the network and serves them a shared root filesystem. You maintain one template; clients get a fresh, consistent environment each time they boot.

The project was redesigned and rewritten from scratch in 2019 by alkisg to support modern technologies such as systemd, updated desktop environments, Wayland, and UEFI. Only this new version is actively developed. The older codebase is now called LTSP5 and sits in minimal maintenance mode, so new deployments should target the current version.

The tools LTSP configures for you

LTSP wires together several standard components rather than replacing them:

Function Tool used
Network boot loader (boot menu, loads kernel/initrd) iPXE
DHCP / ProxyDHCP (assigns client IPs) dnsmasq or isc-dhcp-server
TFTP (sends iPXE/kernel/initrd to clients) dnsmasq or tftpd-hpa
Optional DNS caching or blacklisting dnsmasq
Compressed client root filesystem mksquashfs
Serving the squashfs image over the network NFS or NBD
Making the read-only image writable per client tmpfs and overlayfs
User home directories (stored on the server) NFS or SSHFS
User authentication SSH, SSHFS, or LDAP

The tmpfs/overlayfs combination is what lets each client treat the shared image as writable, similar to how a live CD works — changes are temporary and per-client, while the underlying template stays untouched.

What you'll find on the site

The site is organized around getting you from zero to booting clients:

  • Documentation — preparation and installation instructions, including Raspberry Pi OS and a Personal Package Archive (PPA).
  • Netboot clients — guidance for the client side of the setup.
  • Man pages — reference pages for ltsp, ltsp.conf, ltsp-dnsmasq, ltsp-image, ltsp-info, ltsp-initrd, ltsp-ipxe, ltsp-kernel, ltsp-nfs, and ltsp-remoteapps.
  • Guides — including an ISC DHCP server guide, plus notes on Markdown, Netconsole, a proposed PPA, PXELinux, specifications, Snap packaging, and versioning.
  • Support — a chat room for help.
  • Coding — the GitHub repository.

Who this is for

LTSP fits environments where many identical workstations connect over a LAN and you'd rather manage one image than many disks — classrooms, labs, and similar setups. It assumes you control the network services (DHCP, TFTP) or can run a ProxyDHCP alongside an existing router. If you only have a handful of independent machines with their own local storage, the overhead of a netboot infrastructure usually isn't worth it.

To get started, continue to the installation page on ltsp.org.