Testing questions

Sun Mar 5 13:25:22 UTC 2006

hi,
Am Sonntag, den 05.03.2006, 14:35 +0200 schrieb Jonathan Carter:
> I've been testing flight 4, and have some questions.
> 
wow, what a nice test report !!

> 1. After installing, I had to run ltsp-update-sshkeys before I could log
> in. Will this be fixed by release, or is it something that I might have
> done wrong that would require me to do this step?
thats something i want to have solved for release, yes :)

> 2. The memory usage after boot is great- just about 32MB. With the
> average amount of software (OOo, firefox, etc), it goes up to about
> 37MB. If I open as much as I can and try to trash the system, it goes up
> to more or less 42MB. Does this mean that the spec for the 32MB thin
> client usage will mean that the initial memory usage of the thin client
> will be 32MB, or should it be less than that at boot and increase when
> opening more programs?
> 3. https://wiki.edubuntu.org/EdubuntuLtsConfParams reports that
> SWAP_SERVER is implemented, but not tested. How would I configure this?
> With just a SWAP_SERVER = 192.168.0.254 in the lts.conf file? The above
> RAM usage should be fine on a 32MB computer, if it can swap to the
> server. 10MB is very easy to swap out over the network.
> 
even with ltsp 4.1 you wont start any app on a thin client without
swapserver, its able to boot, but logging in and starting firefoxx willl
kill the machine ... if you set up the nbd-server package on the server
and point the client to it (setting SWAP_SERVER and NBD_PORT in your
lts.conf) it should just work ...
anyway, i want to improve the situation in dapper+1, see:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FullyAutomaticSwapServer

> 4. The new Intel server boards have a strange "feature", where there's
> some kind of a gap between 3GB and 4GB RAM. This means that, if have 4GB
> RAM installed (typical for LTSP servers), you will only be able to see
> the first 3GB, and would need to install a kernel that supports 64GB RAM
> to see the full 4GB. Would it be possible to ship Edubuntu with a kernal
> for support for 64GB RAM? And what about SMP support? Does Edubuntu do
> that?
that would mean to drop support for i386 generic from the CD (since we
can only ship one kernel package) which indeed would break many clients
that are not 686 standard (we use the same kernel for client and server
on install) i was planning to put a little section into the docs
describing how and why to get a 686-smp kernel
> 
> 5. The themed LDM is much nicer than the old one. How much further is it
> likely to improve before release of the next Edubuntu? Would it be
> possible to have a session chooser and language chooser? Both are quite
> essential, imo. It also doesn't warn you yet when you're trying to
> log-on, while you're already logged onto another workstation. A
> configuration setting that would disallow multiple logins for the same
> account would be great too (sorry for feature requests ;) ). Another
> 'problem' (perhaps pertaining more to ssh than anything else), LDM
> doesn't allow logging in with passwordless accounts. In tuXlabs, we use
> pam_unix.so with nullok auth, to allow us to set up some passwordless
> guest accounts when a lab is innitially installed, meaning that learners
> can jump in and use the lab immediately. Is there a way for LDM to allow
> passwordless logins? Another suggestion has been to add a button "Guest"
> to the login manager, and then LDM can create a new, random account with
> random password, and log you in there. After your session it gets
> deleted. Any comments on this?
that requires a config that is not in place yet, i was planning to
implement both in dapper+1 if we have a gui [1] to create and manage
sessions... the problem here is, that i dont know which sessions and
languages a particular server offers, that needs a more general
solution.
> 
> 6. Will Edubuntu ship with any kind of flash plugin? I know that
> Macromedia's plug-in has a schleppy licence. GNU/Gnash isn't at release
> version yet, and the free flash plugin is very incomplete. Wouldn't it
> be best to include some kind of flash plugin by default though? A lot of
> educational content everywhere is created using flash.
even if we had the space (flash is ~10M we dont even have 1M), flash is
still not shippable under a free license, so you'll have to resort to
multiverse, even in dapper

> 
> 7. What's the status with sound? I got a sound icon on my client
> taskbar, and played some .ogg files in Rhythmbox, and it looks like its
> playing, but no sound came out of the client. Does sound work out of the
> box, or does it need some additional configuration?
> 
it should work if you set SOUND=True in your lts.conf, if it doesnt,
please file a bug

> 8. I'm trying to understand some of the LTSP tags better. I assume that
> they'll work a bit differently on Ubuntu LTSP than on ltsp.org. Does
> "XSERVER = 192.168.0.254" mean that the client should listen for an
> XDMCP server on 192.168.0.254, or has it been adapted to connect to an
> LDM session on 192.168.0.254?
the XSERVER variable is only to define the X11 driver that should be
used (as you show below at 10.)

> 9. SCREEN_01 to SCREEN_12 is reported to work, and it does, except that
> it breaks something else. For example, "SCREEN_01 = startx" would bring
> up a grey cursor with the X cursor. And the keyboard becomes
> unresponsive. Is this session looking for an XDMSERVER to connect to?
> "SCREEN_09 = shell" does give me a root terminal on tty9, but then LDM
> doesn't start up. There's no errors anywhere either :/
nope, it does exactly what you told it ... it started an xserver on
console 01, since there is no session installed apart from the default
(ldm) which is no normal xsession, it cant start anything else apart
from the xserver you requested ... install something to use as xsession
in the client chroot (xterm will suffice) and you'll see that it starts
what it can :)

> 
> 10. I've tested thin client specific settings, for example:
>         [00:11:25:84:CE:BA]
>           XSERVER = ati
>     and it works fine. Should this be marked as tested in
> https://wiki.edubuntu.org/EdubuntuLtsConfParams ? or is it not
> applicable to that page?
i'd like to start subpages for the different distros here, there are a
*lot* of new supported options in dapper, but breezy user should still
have a place to go ...
> 
> Otherwise, the ssh tunneling seems way more efficient that XDMCP. 
you should try with NETWORK_COMPRESSION=True in lts.conf, its not on by
default ;)
> I can't wait to see how Edubuntu will perform in the tuXlabs. We'll need
> to find some workaround for the RAM issue, though. Many PC's in our
> first 50 labs or so have 32MB RAM, perhaps they need replacement.
as said above, have a look at nbd-server, its very easy to set up, but
you need to know the amount of clients in advance and create a swapfile
for every client manually ...

> Otherwise, the bootup speed is fantastic now. And it's nice to have a
> bootsplash on the thin clients as well. Can't wait to see it with the
> new Edubuntu artwork!
heh, me as well ... i havent seen *anything* yet :)

thanks for this wonderful feedback, its really appreciated :)

ciao
	oli

[1] http://people.ubuntu.com/~ogra/LTSPManager/
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