Network Card problem

[James Call]

First of all thanks for your responses about clustering.  I can see
the point that it is too much hassle for the small benefit.

Second.  Does anyone have fat clients working?  I guess that I don't
understand the terminology.  What is the difference between a diskless
client and a fat client?  We are using p3 clients without hard drives.
 They have a ton of CPU capacity that goes unused, while the server is
getting dogged down.

Third.  We are looking to expand our lab from 25 clients to 50
clients.  Our AMD dualcore 3gig RAM machine can NOT handle it.  What
do you folks suggest? Is there anyone out there in the USA that knows
a great place for servers??

Forth and foremost.  I was out of town and got a call from our school
that the lab was down.  I went and checked everything out this is what
I found.

We have 2 nics one with address 192.168.1.100 that serves DHCP to the
clients in the lab.  The other nic is 192.168.2.151 that brings
internet in from the office.  When the clients boot, they hang like
they are getting another DHCP offer from a router or something.  So I
turn of nic2 (192.168.2.151) and the clients work.  Then I boot
everybody up.  Then turn on NIC2 again for the internet.  This is a
totally stupid workaround, but I couldn't figure anything else out.  I
can't find any other box offering dhcp.  If I disconnect the cable
from NIC2 reboot the server, the clients hang at the same point.  So
it isn't a DHCP conflict.  I am guessing it is something crazy within
the server.  I spent about 20 hours trying to figure out the problem.
Then in frustration I reinstalled (and updated) to 6.06  That was a
drag to add all the users again?!@#$#@#@

I still have this problem.  The worst part is that I am not the
computer teacher, so I had to make a training manual showing how to
use webmin to take down then up the NIC2.  There has to be some
reasonable solution to this.  Any ideas?

-- 

Thanks, James

http://www.manueldublan.org/computerlab/