Some testing

Sat Oct 21 15:15:52 UTC 2006

Hi Oliver

On Sat, 2006-10-21 at 11:11 +0200, Oliver Grawert wrote:
> > 1. Installer warns that it could not use a network card for dhcpd, and
> > that it should be manually edited. I think this is a result of my pc
> > getting an ip address from the network that isn't in the default
> > settings range. I think it's a bit strange that a server install seeks a
> > dhcp address. I think that it would be better to ask the user if they'd
> > like to run a dhcp client or not, even though we'd ideally like as few
> > questions as possible.
> did you use a machine with two NICs ? we default to it now, the first
> NIC *tries* to configure with dhcp, if there is no response in time it
> will fall back to what you are used to (manual static setup)
> the second NIC will be automatically used for the thin client network,
> the dhcp server will only bind to this interface so the other one can be
> dhcp client on another network or have a static ip as defined through
> the test in the beginning.
> if you have more than two NICs it will give you a selection list for the
> thin client sided interface.
> if you have only one NIC or a NIC thats configured to the address we
> want to use for the ltsp network (some address of the 192.168.0. range),
> it will warn you.

Heh, no. I was over-eager to test and didn't read the testing notes.
Although, this afternoon I did try with two network cards, and it failed
as well :(

The first card was an i100 card and the second one a rtl8139 (not that I
think the type of cards at are fault here). Both were detected fine by
the installer, since it asked me which one I want as my primary
interface. It still gave me an error about dhcpd not goint to be
auto-configured :/

Bug #67356:
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/debian-installer/+bug/67356

> > 2. The 'Education' menu has lost it's icon.
> did you file a bug ?

I wasn't sure if it was already fixed in a later build.

Bug #67357:
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/edubuntu-artwork/+bug/67357

> > 4. Under games, Gcompris crashes horribly, it even logs me out of my
> > gnome-session. I've asked in #edubuntu for testing of newer edgy builds,
> > and it is reported to work fine by one person who is running a more
> > updated version of edgy. Output of running gcompris >& in a terminal
> > just before it closes my session:
> > """ """
> could you try running it with -x from a terminal ? 

I have now. It runs fine, even though it's not stretched full screen. I
assume that without the -x option it doesn't change screen resolution.

Bug #67360:
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/gcompris/+bug/67360

> > 6. Under the Internet menu, everything works fine except Evolution. When
> > I open Evolution I get a message that an unknown CORBA exception has
> > occured (IDL:omg.org/CORBA/COMM_FAILURE:1.0) (I think that the omg error
> > is a but funny). It warns that I might loose some of my old data, but
> > this is the first time that evolution is run on this fresh system. The
> > firefox homepage contains the correct version, and all the data is still
> > correct and relevant. 
> please file bugs

Hmmm... when I add new users to the system, I can't log in from the thin
client. I tried ltsp-updates-sshkeys, rebooting, creating more users,
and I still can just login as the first user.

*FILE BUG FOR THIS

LDM doesn't warn me that I'm logged in on the server before letting me
in. I know this can't be fixed for 6.10, but I filed a bug for it for
future reference:

Bug #67366:
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bug/67366

The bugbuddy message does not appear on the client when logged out on
the server. I don't think this is a seperate bug. I think we should just
state in the documentation that logging in from different machines as
the same user is unsupported and users shouldn't do it. Scott, are you
listening? :)

> > 12. Everything under System -> Administration works as expected.
> > Although, d-i is clever enough to disallow you to use admin as a
> > username, while the Users and Groups tool does allow you. I think it
> > would be good to change the tool to disallow admin creation too, but
> > that's a bug and one for Feisty.
> please file it :)

I'm going to look like a bug by the end of the day!

Bug #67378:
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/gnome-system-tools/+bug/67378

> > 14. So that was the boring part, now to LTSP... I simply set my IP
> > address to be in the 192.168.0.0 network and dhcpd started fine. I
> > see /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf is still installed, some users might find it
> > confusing having two dhcpd.conf's. We might have to highlight that the
> > dhcpd.conf file is in /etc/ltsp
> ltsp manager should make it obsolete to edit config files in feisty, but
> indeed, it should be pointed out more in the docs ... since we use the
> default dhcpd package i cant make the config file it supplies go away :)

Okay. Scott has it covered in the LTSP documentation.

> > 15. Fired up a thin client, PXE works fine, haven't tested etherboot
> > yet. Usplash disappears for less than a second displaying an error about
> > udev: "udevd-event[1732]: run_program:  /dev/null failed, no such file
> > or directory". I had to reboot the client multiple times to get the full
> > error down, about once every three reboots, it didn't show the message.
> note that the clients log to the servers syslog by default now, please
> check if there are traces of errors (even though udev comes up before
> logging there might be subsequent errors)

Bug #67383:
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/ltsp/+bug/67383

> > As a side-note, the server's disk seems to work quite hard with even one
> > client booting. It might be beneficial in future versions of LTSP to
> > make some tweaks so that the NFS disk reads will be cached in RAM more
> > aggresively.
> noted .... a whishlist bug against ltsp would be nice, so i have a
> reminder

Bug #67390:
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/ltsp/+bug/67390

I can't figure out where to change the bug to a wishlist bug? Seems like
I just can't get along nicely with Launchpad UI :)

> > 18. Added the user to the 'fuse' group, and logged out and back in, and
> > inserted a usb flash disk. The device was on my desktop, but when I
> > double-clicked on it, nothing happened and the desktop became
> > non-responsive. 
> that shouldnt happen and is likely related to your udev problem in the
> beginning, please file a bug ad attach /var/log/messages
> and /var/log/syslog for the time that happened

Bug #67383 (as above):
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/ltsp/+bug/67383

> > 19. It's great to see a defualt lts.conf file, but it would be nice to
> > see some examples in it.
> its hidden in /opt/ltsp/i386/usr/share/doc/ltsp-client/examples/ i plan
> to make a ltsp-docs package for feisty you can just install on the
> server

Ok, but I really really liked the built-in examples that K12-LTSP
had/has.

> > 20. LTSP in Ubuntu 6.10 looks great. It feels much, much more mature
> > than it did in the last two releases. I'm very happy with it, although
> > LDM could do with a nicer Edubuntu theme, and it could be a little more
> > 'friendly' too.
> the cheap theme is a tradeoff for network speed, fullscreen pics load
> longer ... but ldms theme engine should see an overhaul in feisty...

Fantastic :)

> > 21. I'm not sure that the session manager in LDM works as expected, the
> > choices it currently gives me is: Default, gnome-session and metacity.
> > Choosing metacity doesn't work. I will test this more thoroughly
> > tomorrow (after installing fluxbox or xfce on the server)
> it works fine here with xfce and icewm, please file a bug about the
> metacity thing.

Ok. I have two bugs here:

1. The metacity thing:

Bug #67397:
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/ltsp/+bug/67397

2. When choosing a session other than gnome-session from LDM, the user
logs in perfectly. However, after logging out, the user can't log in
again no matter which session is chosen. What's worse, is that the only
thing that resets it back again is by rebooting the server, rebooting
the client doesn't work. I will investigate this further...

Bug #67403:
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/ltsp/+bug/67403

> > 22. After changing the language, I could not log in anymore, I just got
> > kicked back to LDM. I will also test this more thoroughly tomorrow.
> please do, it works here ...

It works fine here too. I think last night I fell victim to bug #67403.

> > More information and updates on some of the issues will be available
> > tomorrow. Overall, Edubuntu has matured a lot in this release, mostly
> > due to improvements in LTSP. If I haven't managed to break my LTSP
> > already, I could send some more information on memory usage on the thin
> > client. Although I can confirm that swap over NBD works out of the box.

I didn't have a chance to do more in-depth testing. Reproducing and
filing these bugs were quite time-intensive. Will try to do more testing
tomorrow.

I've been thinking about the edubuntu-testers and edubuntu-bugsquad
teams too. ogra, do you think it would be worth while to do 'Edubuntu
bug days' on Wednesdays too? I know that there's not usually many
Edubuntu bugs, and that Ubuntu bug day is Edubuntu bug day too, but
perhaps having a specific Edubuntu effort couldn't hurt? It's also
convenient that we meet every Wednesday, we could do a small bug roundup
in the technical section.

-Jonathan