LTSP testing in Jaunty - how fat is local apps?

[Grayde Bowen]

By too much; the 256MB nodes can cope with 1 GUI program such as Open Office 
or even VLC although video playback (from a local USB mount, not /home on 
the server) is jerky.  Opening a 2nd GUI program on the same node; esp 
gnome_system_monitor, effectively knocked the node down.  Luckily there is 
still the tty1 on ctrl-alt-F1.
I had 14 nodes up at 100 Mbps, there were 5 of us trying out programs on a 
node each, with some swapping as nodes froze up.  The 1 Gb dual core 1.6 GHz 
node held up OK even running Blender.   Swap is maxed out on the 256MB 
nodes.  Most of these had no HDD so this must all be held in the local node 
RAM.

I will try a low fat Nubae install later in the week and give that a go.

Here is a ps aux sorted by CPU power of 1 node.  The actual CPU levels seem 
pretty low.  Puse audio is not working but that is the least of my worries. 
I will need to try a -k4 switch to check the memory useage.

$ ps aux | sort -rn -k3 | head

student1  5310  2.2  4.0 174096 61780 ?        Sl   13:28   0:09 
/usr/lib/openoffice/program/soffice.bin -writer -splash-pipe=5

root      5018  2.2  0.8  25236 12704 tty7     Ss+  13:27   0:10 /usr/bin/X 
:0 -br -audit 0 -auth /var/lib/gdm/:0.Xauth -nolisten tcp vt7

student1  5156  0.8  1.2  35276 19876 ?        S    13:27   0:03 gnome-panel

student1  5331  0.7  1.1  40276 17240 ?        Sl   13:32   0:01 
gnome-terminal

pulse     4250  0.6  0.2  27316  3520 ?        S<l  12:16   0:29 
/usr/bin/pulseaudio --system --exit-idle-time=-1 --disable-shm --no-cpu-limit 
 --resample-method=trivial --high-priority -L module-detect -L 
module-esound-protocol-tcp auth-anonymous=1 -L module-native-protocol-tcp 
auth-anonymous=1 -L module-volume-restore -L module-rescue-streams -L 
module-native-protocol-unix -n

student1  5158  0.5  1.4  53472 22332 ?        S    13:27   0:02 
nautilus --no-desktop --browser

student1  5142  0.4  0.6  18844 10360 ?        S    13:27   0:01 
/usr/bin/metacity

student1  5221  0.1  0.7  26348 11376 ?        Ss   13:28   0:00 
gnome-power-manager

student1  5214  0.1  0.8  25532 13796 ?        S    13:28   0:00 
update-notifier

student1  5213  0.1  0.8  25492 12952 ?        S    13:28   0:00 python 
/usr/share/system-config-printer/applet.py