Re: [LUG] LTSP, but sort of reverse use.

[Andrew Rogers <andrew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Neil Stone wrote:

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> Andrew Rogers wrote:
>
> > Tom mentioned K12LTSP in a different thread so I thought I would 
> > mention my different use of LTSP.
> >
> > My setup:
> >
> > Server: 650 MHz 30GB HD. University provided. Mandrake 9.1 (don't 
> > tell the Uni!). eth0 connected to Uni's LAN, eth1 I added myself.
> >
> > Client: Self built Athlon XP2000, 256 Mb DDR333MHz RAM. Approx cost 
> > (to me) £200. No HD,  no CD, no monitor. Not really a terminal.
> >
> > Why: I need raw processing power for simulations, the Athlon provides 
> > it at low cost.
> >
> > The Athlon runs an SSH server, I ssh into the Athlon from my PC and 
> > the Athlon is the set to run the simulation. The significant 
> > difference between my use of LTSP and 'normal' use is that my client 
> > (the Athlon) has no display and thus is not a terminal.
> >
> > I found it necessary to use files from a Mandrake 9 installation on 
> > the clients NFS mounted filesystem so that my programs would run. The 
> > LTSP filesystem was not suitable, but without it I wouldn't have even 
> > tried this.
> >
> > It seems that the K12LTSP is similar to what I did with the Mandrake 
> > 9 filesystem but K12LTSP is based on RedHat 9. I expect the K12LTSP 
> > is better than my effort with Mandrake, the Athlon doesn't shut down 
> > properly.
>
>
> Whats this "shutdown" think you mention...? 

It's to do with the init.d scripts I think. The NFS filesystems are 
unmounted by the client being shutdown, then the remaining init.d 
scripts can't be executed and so the client never actually switches off. 
I haven't really investigated since I'm not worried to much as the 
filesystems are remote from the client and don't get corrupted.

> > The LTSP relied on the server running applications displaying them on 
> > the terminals. My use is the opposite way around, I use my PC as a 
> > server and display for a number (only 1 at the moment) of fast 
> > clients that run simulations.
> >
> > My question is: Using K12LTSP can the clients access a full RedHat 
> > distro? And do I need RedHat running on the server, or just installed 
> > on an NFS exported filesystem? At $15 I'm tempted to buy the K12LTSP 
> > distro CDs.
> >
> > Anyone else making different use of LTSP?
> >
> > Regards
> > Andrew Rogers
>
> Depends on your meaning of LTSP.. I built some diskless clients that 
> boot using pxe/dhcp and run an X server connected to a umm.. server 
> (that is just soo wrong that way they describe that)
>
> When you log in, you are logging in to the server.. no processing 
> happens client side as such, except the execution of the X server and 
> a few other scripts... Earnt myself a bottle of JD for making those... 
> (i think i know who got the better end of the deal tho eh ;-) ) 


For my application the client side intentionally does a lot of heavy 
processing, the server holds the filesystem for the client. The 
simulations that I run typically use 99.7% of the clients CPU resources. 
The server remains inactive for most of the time, it handles the 
simulations output which it saves to HD. I actually use the server as a 
PC (Internet browsing, emails, report writting, etc.) and the thin 
client as a number cruncher so I log into the client from the server, 
the opposite way to the normal use of LTSP. When I say server I'm 
refering to NFS server and not X server, my simulation programs are 
command line based. The thin client does not run an X server since I 
want to use every last CPU cycle for my simulation. In a normal LTSP 
setup you would expect the server to have the higher performance and the 
clients to be slow (and quiet!) but my setup ain't normal and I'm using 
LTSP well outside of is intended use.

> Neil Stone
>
>    Flash on telnet://TR3.Org:3000  and  irc://irc.r-t-f-m.org.uk/DCLUG
>
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