ltsp setting

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Fri, 09 Nov 2007, antonello.facchetti at alice.it wrote:

> I have had no problem so far: tried some pII terminals with rtlk nics and
> quite simple videocards, ps/2 mice, digital monitors and they boot with
> no hacking at all.

Great!

> Now I'm up with some other celerons with older cards and old serial mice.
> They boot correctly but they freeze with a blank screen with the X cursor
> of the mouse, just before the moment they should show the login screen.
> It looks like the system has problems identifying something (mouce? video
> card? moinitor?)

Serial mice?  I'd guess they're pretty old then.  Are you sure they meet
the hardware requirements for a thin client?  Do they have a PS/2 port and
if so could you try one with a PS/2 mouse?  I think you need a special
setting for serial mice, see below.

I gather you get the black and white X screen, but not the edubuntu login
screen?

Can you tell us what video card the machines have?

> How can I control the booting process on the server?

Broadly (if you're using gutsy), you set parameters for thin client
hardware in:

	/var/lib/tftpboot/ltsp/i386/lts.conf

Examples and documentation for how to use this file are here:

	/opt/ltsp/i386/usr/share/doc/ltsp-client/examples

You might, for example try setting the mouse device:

	X_MOUSE_DEVICE=/dev/ttyS0

> How can I find out which drivers are loaded for the working terminals?

You can set the root password on your thin clients
	https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EdubuntuFAQ#head-285f03d2d3ed2f29847c7793dbdb8f1488814c1b

then, when a client starts up, you can press <CTRL><ALT><F1> and you will
get a text terminal running on the thin client.  Login using the above
username and password.  Some useful commands:

 - lspci
   tells you what pci devices (including the machine has, incl video card)

 - less /var/log/Xorg.0.log 
   look at the X environment logs

 - less /var/log/ldm.log 
   look at the display manager logs

 - less /etc/X11/xorg.conf
   look at the configuration of the mouse, keyboard and video card


Gavin