Problems with LTSP

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Thu, 28 Jun 2007, Valerio Pachera wrote:

> 1-I did dist-upgrade both, on the chroot envirorment and ubuntu.
> After it, when I login in gdm, gnome is blocked. If I wait serveral
> minutes it finish to load but is too slow. Before dist-upgrade gome
> was workin fine. 

Someone on edubuntu-users reported something very similar after a recent
upgrade on 25/06.  It is possible some recent package upgrade has
introduced a bug that only affects a few people.

Did you upgrade a lot of packages at once?  Can you open synaptic and look
at file->history and tell us what packages got upgraded.  We might be able
to track down what's causing the problem.

> I receive a message from gnome that complain about the user setting daemon.
> This happen with all accounts.

I suppose that might be a symptom or a cause.

> The best is when I try to log out: it doesn't matter wich button I
> press ("shut down", "cancel", "hibernate") because gnome freez.
> I have to kill it with /etc/init.d/gdm stop

Ouch.

> I tested LTSP using a loptop of my friend and it was workin fine.
> The logout was workin but not the shut down.
> One or more time the terminal (my fiend laptop) freez without do anything.

So you logged out on a thin client, hit shutdown button and it froze?  This
is not uncommon on some machines which don't manage to shutdown properly
and leave the login screen up but mouse/keyboard don't work.  You can just
power down safely at that point (in fact it's fairly safe to power down a
thin client at any time).

> I repeatet the edubuntu server installation and the problems was the same.

Did the slowdown only occur after the upgrade?

> 2-The TCM (thin client manager) works but not completly, it doen't
> show the terminal images so is not possible to take control and all
> the ather actions.
> It needs x11vnc for work,install in the chroot.
> I did the chroot and when the command "apt-get install x11vnc" forzen
> the system.
> It was not even possible use the console.
> Like before this porblem repeat in both the installation I did.

That's really strange.  A server hung while you were installing x11vnc on
the thin client chroot?  Is there anything useful in the log files
(/var/log/syslog, /var/log/messages, /var/log/auth.log,... etc.) which
might tell us what happened.  I'd be inclined to think it's a coincidence,
ie apt wasn't the cause of the crash.

> I readed in same forums that also when x11vnc is install the TCM
> doesn't work and need a command in the /etc/rc.local:
> 
> In this wiki
> https://wiki.edubuntu.org/InstallX11VncOnLtspClients?highlight=%28x11vnc%29
> the suggestion is
> x11vnc -display :6 -forever -bg
> 
> but in a forum they said it doesn't work and use
> x11vnc -display :6 -forever -loop &
> instead.

The VNC part of the Thin Client Manager stuff is still a little rough
around the edges alright.  There have been some threads on edubuntu-users
about this too:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/edubuntu-users/2007-June/thread.html#1204

I'd say it won't be too long before that stuff gets ironed out.  All of the
technology is there (it does actually work once correctly configured), it's
just some setup stuff that needs attention.

> Like I said in the beginning I'm following a project about install
> edubuntu server in school and the LTSP service is important for this
> project.
> May you be able to fix these bugs?

I would hope so, though in most cases we need to get a little more
information from you to pinpoint the problem.

Gavin