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Re: [LUG] Marketing Linux

 

John Horne wrote:

>Thanks for this. I'm not so much thinking of 'personal preference' in
>terms of what I want on the desktop, but more in terms of preference in
>running as a server. To that extent I have found Fedora very easy to
>maintain in terms of patches (with yum), security with iptables/tcp
>wrappers and running services with chkconfig. All the required services
>needed for each server (e.g. MTA for mailhubs, web caching for web
>caches) exist as rpm's so are simple to install. I guess it's just a
>question of my learning a different distro - using apt-get, synaptic
>etc :-)
>
>  
>
>From experience, there isn't that much difference between yum & apt,
well at least it doesn't appear to have much difference to me.

I generally use apt from the command line rather than Synaptic, but
thats because I find it faster to run things from the command line
rather than launching a GUI program.  I must admit though, Synaptic has
proven to be useful when searching for things to install.

>>I haven't tried LTSP in Ubuntu.  From what I have read (in a recent
>>Linux format magazine), LTSP is included in the Edbuntu distro.  Not
>>sure how easy it is to get up and running though.  LTSP was fairly easy
>>to get running on Debian (after I changed the DHCP Server & TFTP server)
>>and it even boots on my old Blueberry iMac.
>>
>>    
>>
>That was my first problem - I couldn't work out if I needed ubuntu or
>edubuntu, or is LTSP included in both? As far as I can tell the
>thin-client support is in '5.10' regardless of whether this is 'ubuntu'
>or 'edubuntu' or even 'kubuntu'.
>  
>
I did a quick search with apt and it came up with:

rob@athlon64:~$ apt-cache search ltsp
ltsp-client - LTSP client environment
ltsp-server - Basic LTSP server environment
ltsp-server-standalone - Complete LTSP server environment
ltsp-utils - Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) administration utilities

>
>John.
>
>  
>

After looking a bit more in Synaptic (which gives a bit more
information), I found the following:

ltsp-client:
LTSP client environment
The scripts needed to configure and boot an LTSP client.

ltsp-server:
Basic LTSP server environment
This is the basic environment depending on external a DHCP server to
point the clients to the LTSP server.

ltsp-server-standalone:
Complete LTSP server environment
This is the complete environment including a DHCP server to bootstrap
the clients.

ltsp-utils:

LTSP allows you to connect lots of low-powered thin client terminals to a
server.  Applications typically run on the server, and accept input and
display their output on the thin client display.

This package includes:
- ltspadmin:  Install/Update an LTSP system.
- ltspcfg:  Setup an LTSP system.


I'm guessing on a new installation where you don't have a DHCP server
(or at least don't have a DHCP server that you can specify options on,
you'd need to install the ltsp-server-standalone.  I'm not sure what is
in the ltsp-client package.

I installed my LTSP server from the tarballs from their web site.  It
wasn't too much of a problem to install.  I had to disable my existing
DHCP server, install the dhcp3-server and dhcp3-common packages, and
also install tftp-hpa package.

I couldn't find any documentation on Ubuntu's website for installing
LTSP on Ubuntu.  I dare say there is some, I just didn't look very
much.  I'll have a play later and see if I can get LTSP working on Ubuntu.

>>Where adding applications is concerned, on my LTSP server, if I add an
>>application using Synaptic, I can use it from the LTSP server itself, or
>>from any of the LTSP terminals.  It means installing applications is so
>>much easier, rather than installing multiple copies, you just install
>>the one copy.
>>
>>    
>>
>That's interesting. At present we have LTSP 4.1 on a Fedora Core 3
>server. However, if I install a package on the server, then it is only
>available on the server because the relevant package files are not put
>into the directories used for the LTSP linux image. To get the package
>available to the LTSP clients I have to build the package from source
>within the LTSP build environment (LBE). Overall a pain. My
>understanding was that ubuntu got around this by doing exactly what you
>say - install a package onto the server and it becomes available to the
>LTSP clients (somehow). It sounds easy and impressive.
>  
>
Ahh, I might have got my wires crossed a bit here.  What I ment, is the
packages run on the server.

For instance.... I have two terminals which remote boot from the LTSP
server.  One is an old IBM Aptiva P2-266, the other is an Apple iMac
G3-300.  The systems both boot from the network, and download/run their
specific kernels (good old Mac addresses!).  They then mount a couple of
NFS shares on the server so they can load the required modules for
sound/mouse etc and also start X.  When they've booted up into X, it
connects to the server and displays a login window which runs on the
server.  I can then login to the server as if I was sitting in front of
it and start using applications which are installed on the server.  The
applications run on the server and the desktop is displayed on the
terminal.  If I install a new application on the server (say, I install
Firefox), then whoever logs on (be it, myself, my kids etc) they can all
run Firefox.  It makes my life easier as I don't have to install the
application twice, or even worse, find a PPC version for the Mac!

I haven't yet managed to get the terminals to run programs themselves
which I'm guessing is what you're on about?

Rob

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