Testing questions

[Jonathan Carter]

Hi Oli

On Sun, 2006-03-05 at 14:25 +0100, Oliver Grawert wrote:
> > 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

I know. We used to install a default K12-LTSP in the tuXlabs, that
didn't have NFS_SWAP enabled by default. Those mahcines froze all the
time and caused all kinds of problems, which is why swapping over
network is so important to me, but you understand that, of course :)

I'll have to play with that later though. Bandwidth is scarce, even the
apt-get update it would take before i could install nbd-server would
destroy my little gprs connection :(   (i'll hopefully get adsl in the
next month or so)

> 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

I think either two CD's or a DVD is inevitable within the next two
releases.

> 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

I got the sound working, but there's no sound in flash though (thought
that gstreamer would fix the flash/sound problem). Have you seen this
before? Any idea how we could fix this on Edubuntu? Some people have got
it working with certain combinations of K12-LTSP / Flash / esd / some
other hacks.

> > 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.)

Sorry, meant SERVER, not XSERVER.

> 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 :)

Thanks, that makes much more sense now.

> > 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 ...

I think it's best to keep it all in one page, and have some kind of key
to show since which version it's supported, for example, supported since
breezy would be highlighted in green, dapper blue. Or add one star or
two next two each, whatever works best on the wiki.

> > 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 tried that, it didn't have any effect. It doesn't matter if there's
spaces in there, does it? I have "NETWORK_COMPRESSION = True". I tested
it with tuxtype, which has lots of moving graphics (this was after
restarting the client again), and it was still the same 'speed'. BTW- do
you think the author would add a switch to disable that flying text for
us? It brings the network to its knees!

> > 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 ...

Ok. I'll play with that a bit later during the week.

> thanks for this wonderful feedback, its really appreciated :)

Thanks for all your wonderful hard work, Oli, and for all your patience
on IRC!

-Jonathan