Is it just me, or is LTSP a mess?

Luis Montes monteslu at cox.net
Fri Sep 19 16:37:11 BST 2008


David Van Assche wrote:
>>> - tcm (thin client manager)
>>>
>>> Indeed this no longer exists, and I believe it has been discussed
>>> about here before on various occasions. Italc has replaced thin client
>>> manager as the software that should be run to control thin clients
>>> from a centralised location. The new documentation reflects this (new
>>> in intrepid ibex), and I agree it was confusing, but a quick jump to a
>>> channel of importance (#ltsp primarily, but also #edubuntu) will give
>>> you the answers you need. Or a search in google. To install it is
>>> apt-get install italc-client
>>>
>>>       
>> Is it just the docs that have been fixed for 8.10? As far as I can tell italc was broken on 8.04 and I needed to remove it. This is something that should be backported to the Long Term Support version.
>> Thin Client Manager currently locks up on 8.04 as well.
>>
>>     
>
> As far as I have been able to tell, italc works great on 8.04+ (make
> sure you have an up to date version of italc installed, and if it is
> causing problems for you, let us know what they are and we can help.)
> I personally use italc on 8.04 without issues... there are some tricks
> though, like pointing to the clients u want via their server ip (as
> mentioned in an email I sent a while back to the list):
>
> The way to use italc with thin clients is adding 127.0.0.1 or localhost and
> the portnumber 10000+last byte of IP. For example... the client IP I want to
> connect to is:
>
> 192.168.0.15, then connecting to this user from the master Italc interface
> would be:
> localhost:10015
>
> Some users have mentioned it requires the actual IP of the server (ie.
> 192.168.0.254)
>
>
> TCM is no longer supported... don't use it...
>
> I'm sure there are other fixes along with documentation now being up
> to date, but most of the changes are LTSP centric (ie, people from
> different distros work together and then port these ltsp changes to
> all new distros.) In essence LTSP on Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian and Gentoo
> and (though a little different, still based on the same work) Suse all
> work the same because its the same code under the hood.
>
> Whatever changes have been made to other items (gnome, X, open office,
> firefox, etc) are related to the distribution you are using... and
> whatever changes have happened to that distro.
>
>   
>>> - port forwarding
>>>
>>> The reason this is not built in is because no one knows how the
>>> network structure looks like at a particular location. There could be
>>> many different setups, but the documentation tells you how to easily
>>> do this in the most common way (this has been in documentation for a
>>> while now):
>>>
>>>       
>> Agreed. I have a separate IPcop box for content filtering, port forwarding, intrusion detection, etc.
>>
>>     
>>> - lts.conf file
>>>
>>> This is where LTSP gets complex, and its the same across ALL
>>> distributions... If you don't know how to create a file, then it is
>>> not recommended you touch a lts.conf file. Increasingly, reliance on
>>> this file has been diminished to the point that in MOST setups the
>>> lts.conf file is not really required. But if it is, a quick read
>>> through the documentation will show you an example file and where it
>>> should go.
>>>
>>>       
>> I've got a couple of 3 year old Dell workstations that need their video explicitly set in lts.conf
>> I have to set printer servers in lts.conf. I'm still using lts.conf to do my load balancing.
>> It would be great if I didn't have to edit this file, but I don't see it going away any time soon.
>>
>> And the skeleton file that tells you to read the documentation points to a documentation file that doesn't exist. Instead you get to search through the ubuntu website to find the parameters and examples.
>>     
>
> For any fine tuning, lts.conf is indeed the place to do that, and like
> you say, won't be going away any time soon, but has been automated to
> the maximum extent possible. video _should_ work an most thin clients
> out of the box, if it doesn't let us know the video card in question
> so we can take a look.
>
> The documentation now presents all the possible values that can be put
> in lts.conf, if you find there are items required, let us know and
> we'll add them...
> Can u let us know what non existent file its pointing to, so we can fix that?
>
> Kind Regards,
> David Van Assche
>   
Here's what's in the default lts.conf file:

# This is the default lts.conf file for ltsp 5.
# For more information about valid options please see:
# /usr/share/doc/ltsp-client/examples/lts-parameters.txt.gz
# in the client environment

That doc doesn't exist.

Luis





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