Edubuntu in an existing network

[Gavin McCullagh]

On Wed, 20 Dec 2006, François BARILLON wrote:

> What is working now :
> 
> - in normal boot, computers get an IP address from the Windows server.
> - in network boot they get an IP and kernel from the Edubuntu.

From what you've said, I'd be quite sceptical about this.  

I'd expect what's really happening is DHCP request goes out across the
network and both servers respond.  The network booting machines may be
discarding the response which doesn't include network booting info or the
may just not have tripped up on a windows dhcp request yet. During boot,
the thin client again makes a dhcp request to enable the network card,
again getting two responses, it presumably takes the first of these.  The
regular machines are presumably also getting responses from both dhcp
servers and probably discarding one in a not well described way (eg take
whichever comes first or second).

You should really determine what's going on for sure as this may cause you
subtle problems.  tcpdump would be the obvious way to watch what's going
on.  As you have separate ranges, you might check that your windows
machines are really getting windows dhcp addresses and the same for thin
clients (not at network booting, but when they're up and running).  A
windows machine may remember its dhcp address, I think, you may need to do:
	ipconfig /release
	ipconfig /renew
or even reboot to get it to renew from scratch.

Perhaps I've misunderstood something here, but I don't understand how your
machines could intelligently choose one dhcp server or another.  

> - Sound is working on the thin clients, usb keys can mount, ntfs
> partition on the server and on the thin clients are mounted (read only),
> CD inserted on the Edubuntu server are mounted on the thin client.

That sounds very promising -- apart from the cd on the server popping up on
thin clients, which is bad.

> - The "Student control panel" shows users on the thin clients, we can
> send them messages, start or kill apps...

This I have to see too.  Could you post some screenshots somewhere?

> What is not solved yet :
> 
> - trying to use VNC "vncviewer 192.168.1.240:0" or "vncviewer
> edubuntu:0" gets and error "read error : connection reset by peer (104)"
> although the user has enabled the connection.
>     - Is a vnc-server daemon running on thin clients?

I would have thought the vnc server must be running on the server and
therefore you would connect to the server with vncviewer.  Maybe not
though.  It's probably something like 192.168.1.25:13.

> - in the thin clients login screen, we'd like to see "identifiant" in
> french instead of "username".

As a very quick hack, you could edit /usr/lib/ltsp/greeters/gtk and search
for the line:

	markup = '<span size="10000"><b>Username:</b></span>'

which I guess should be modifiable to produce the desired effect.  this
quote is from dapper, so yours might be a little different.

Gavin