A small LTSP network setup

Tue Jun 12 15:39:25 UTC 2012

Hi Faisal,

Webmin is good, but even before jumping there I agree with Matt and recommend giving the standard users and groups app a tryo  But then again, are you going to be administering the server? Webmin is perhaps too much for just managing the users, but it allows you to manage all sorts of other functions as well, so if you are administering the server remotely then webmin might provide a great suite of tools for that.

If your clients are beefy enough then I would go with fat clients.  If they are so-so I would go with localapps and if they are marginal I would go with thin clients.

beefy > P4 2.4 GHz with 1 gig RAM
so-so > P4 1.6 GHz with 512 MB RAM
marginal > P3 or even P2 I have heard.

[All Edubuntu users: would you give the same cut-off points?  What should we publish as our recommendations?]

Alkis asserts that with a fatclient setup you can use a plain (modern) desktop as the server and can be used as the 'teacher computer' as well!  That's what I'll be trying for next year.  Another thing you might want to look into is an easy system of implementation described here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuLTSP/ltsp-pnp.  It's very straightforward with basically the idea that the way your server is setup so will be setup your thin/local/fat clients and therefore you pretty much only need to manage 1 system and not deal with a chrooted system.  Pretty cool.

I just went looking for up to date info on LTSP and it is hard to always know for sure… One thing that is helpful are the old edubuntu mailing list archives as there is lots of practical experience shared there and it is all time-stamped.  Good luck and let us know how things are going!

David G

On Jun 11, 2012, at 10:52 PM, Faisal wrote:

> Hi David,
> 
> Thank you for your response and thank you for pointing out Webmin. No I don't have any LDAP setup currently. Perhaps i can achieve what i want (an easy web interface for user account administration for the non-technical staff) using Webmin???  If so, then there is no need for any LDAP. It is not possible to estimate the number of users right now, but i suspect the lab will be there to use for a good number of this organizations users, they run afternoon classes for children and i am guessing there may be tens of potential users each requiring a user account.
> 
> I have been promised used desktop computers being donated by a school and i don't have their full specs right now. But i am told they would at least be P4 or better. Sorry about the mixup of the terminology, by fat client i was referring to regular desktop computers with a local hard drive. But whether they would host the entire OS image locally or partially i am not sure about. Which is best and gives best performance?
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Faisal
> 
> On 12/06/12 04:29, David Groos wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Faisal,
>> 
>> I'm not sure I understand completely -- do you already have an LDAP server running and you want to tie into that, or are you wanting to create an LDAP server on the edubuntu server to manage your users?  I've done the former, but if you don't already have a centrally managed LDAP system I would simply use the normal user management system.  For the first 3.5 years I used this built in system.  I also used webmin to manage users and in general was happy with it.
>> 
>> (also, you mentioned you were going to get used, 'fat clients' that you were going to run as local apps--I believe the correct term is you were going to get used 'thick clients' since with LTSP we have the term 'fat clients' used to described a situation where the client runs everything locally, getting the entire image from the server.  Please describe the specs of the used hardware you are getting.)  If you run 15 clients as local apps you will be quite fine with the server hardware you described, I'd say.  If you are able to use fat clients (by having powerful enough HW specs on the clients) seems like the server setup would be overkill.
>> 
>> David G
>> 
>> On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 10:09 PM, Faisal <xashiish at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Andrie,
>> 
>> Sorry, i should have provided more details regarding the user. The number of workstations is small but the lab will be open to a large number of people, potentially tens of users and the staff have never used linux before.
>> 
>> 
>> On 12/06/12 04:04, Adrie Taniwidjaja wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I think for this small size of instalation using Edubuntu default user manager is more than enough.
>>> Why make the instalation become more complicating with LDAP stuff ?
>>> 
>>> On Tue, 2012-06-12 at 03:51 +0100, Faisal wrote:
>>>> Hi all,
>>>> 
>>>> I am thinking of setting up a small LTSP network consisting of 10-15 workstations for a local charity. I am coming from the windows terminal services / Citrix world and i am very familiar with that side of things and my Linux experience is average at best.
>>>> 
>>>> So far I have installed these flavours of an LTSP implementation: The debianedu based Skolelinux -  www.slx.no and Edubuntu 12.04 in a VMWare virtual server and i have been mighty impressed with the ease of install of Edubuntu in particular and i think i will go with it. I have been able to boot up a couple of thin clients simultaneously for testing purposes and all seemed to run fine in my small lan at home. I loved some of the built in tools such as Epostes for ease of management.
>>>> 
>>>> In terms of hardware, i think we are going for donated/cheap used fat clients and have the local apps option for LibreOffice, Firefox etc to ease the load on the server. I am also thinking of having an NFS share for the /home partition on a separate grey box(if that further helps ease the load of the server and makes it run better).
>>>> 
>>>> As for the server, there are good deals going on where i am for small office servers such as the HP Proliant ML110 G7 with Intel Xeon E3-1220 / 3.1 GHz(quad core) and 8 GB of DDR3 1333 mhz RAM(upgradable to 16) and 7200 rpm HD disc with dual Gigabit NICs. Would something like this be suitable for powering the 10-15 workstations or will that be pushing it?
>>>> 
>>>> The charity do not have tech savvy staff and i would like a centralized user account setup with openldap.                     But ideally, have a web gui front end for user account creations and password resets. I am looking into tools such as Gosa2 - https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/ and Easy LDAP management found here: http://www.ldap-account-manager.org/ . I have not been successful so far in setting up these tools, but i am still working on it. I may ask someone in my local LUG for help with this part if i struggle. Does anyone know similar tools?
>>>> 
>>>> Apologies for asking too many questions as i am still researching and don't have a clear plan yet. Would appreciate you advice and guidance to any tool or resource that would help me get answers.
>>>> 
>>>> Regards
>>>> Faisal
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Adrie Taniwidjaja - PT. BeLogix Indonesia
>>> Jl. Lengkong Kecil No.73 Bandung
>>> adrie at belogix.com, 022 9199 8360
>>> 
>> 
>> 
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> 

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