performance ltsp server at school

[Uwe Geercken]

hello together.

I have installed the server at our local school and made some first  
tests today.

the server is:
- Core 2 Quad 4 x 2.44 GHz
- 4 GB Dual-Channel-800 Memory
- Gigabit LAN
- 500GB + 200 GB Samsung SATA Disks
- Gigabit Switch
- Clients connected using 100Mb network
- HP 3600 Color network Printer

So I had 5 kids plus myself.

- I started with having them log in and change their given password to  
their personal ones.
- Next we looked around on the filesystem, where I have a shared  
folder for all and a folder for downloads, fotos, linux designs, etc.  
They started an MP3 or opened some images and fotos.
- then I wanted to test printing: so I had them start OpenOffice. This  
is when I first looked at the system monitor: I had 858 MB of User  
used RAM. 0 Swapping. So the kids started writing some textx and  
putting in some stars, lines and similar things.
- next I told them to not close OpenOffice and start Inkscape. Memory  
usage went up to 1.0 GB. they worked in Inkscape for a couple of  
minutes and also printed from there
- next I started ChatPlus - the server - and the kids started the  
client from the console: memory usage went up to 1.1 GB
- finally I told them to log of and shutdown. at this moment only  
myself was left on the system. the memory usage went down to 350 Mb.

so all went well for the described applications.

but I did have a few problems:
- the soundcard is connected to the LCD, but I can not adjust the volume
- I tried to play a flash video tutorial(Learning Ubuntu) but it was  
simply to slow on the clients. so I stopped it.
- some kids tried to start "Pingus" but I saw it was slow aswell
- Frozen Bubble - which is the favorite of the kids runs ok. it is  
slow when the level changes. the LAN feature does not work  
unfortunately. It worked when I tested it at home, so I believe it is  
because of the 10.1.1.0 IP range at school. does anyone know?

so much for the moment. I will write it together and fill in more  
findings in the future. appreciate your comments or questions.

rgds,

uwe