On 15 Jul 2008, at 17:08, Lars Vogdt
Hi
On Dienstag 15 Juli 2008 11:54:39 Jpd wrote:
How well does kiwi-ltsp perform with audio and video applications? Is it already possible to run such applications for example locally on the client?
FYI: I'm still running LTSP 4.2 on openSUSE 10.2 with 30-40 Clients on a Dual-Xeon 3,2 GHz with 4 GB RAM and a 100MBit/s network without problems.
Sounds promising. We have only got a dual 2.8Ghz with 2Gb on 100mbit.
BUT: sound and especially 3D effects (and video) is something you like to do directly on powerful clients. And even if you've enough powerful hardware on the client side, you should use this power directly ;-)
Which is why I did not look at Ltsp in the first place.
How easily can you run everything from the local host?
You can add some local applications in the boot image, but this would expand the boot time as the whole image must be transfered over the network. <= having the "simple" LTSP solution in mind.
Again these are not going to be thin clients. End machines are between P4>=2.8 or Pentum dual cores. There all going to be dual boot with XP due to being shared resources.
Does software installed on the server get "pushed" to the clients so they can be used?
I ask because the clients have more ram and CPU than our server and we are mainly doing 3D and video.
^^ looks like you want to run linux native on the client side.
I have seen kiosk but could not work out if it only did local config and not for a network.
Would perfere to stay on kde as that had worked better with the students.
Looks like the kiosktool is one of the tools you like to have a look at ;-) The settings can be saved on a network storage - so every client has to be "touched" only once so he knows where to get his settings from.
I was hoping for a smarter solution to this. But this will do.
I like to give a short summary about the possibilities from my point of view:
Proposal 1) Mounting directories via NFS from a server: /usr /opt /etc (and some more, but this should be enough) can be mounted read only from a server on each client. Some other directories like /var need to stay on the client or need to be mounted rw from a client. But the files in this directories are normally not necessary for your ideas)
In the end, you can configure your server (which for example can be the teachers client) as you want - even change the settings of the menu entries or (even funnier) just run a "chown -x <application>" to prevent your users on the other workstations starting <application> completely.
Again hassel I was hoping to dodge :(
Proposal 2) Using kiosktool openSUSE Education still has a package "kiosktool-edu-settings" containing two different profiles for KDE. Please ask aochs@gmx.de for details.
Will do
Proposal 3) Use autoyast See http://www.suse.de/~ug/ for details. But this currently just covers the automatic installation and configuration - not updates or new packages.
So not really an option
Proposal 4) Use cfengine or ZenWorks
cfengine or ZenWorks allows to configure each client from a central place. Depending on your needs and clients, this could be a solution if you've a huge amount of different clients.
Zenworks does not seem to work on opensuse Cfengine seems close but I was hoping for a "shrinked wraped" option
Proposal 5) Use a combination of the proposals above including some scripts.
- You can cover your "desktop settings" with kiosktool. - You can install a client "from scratch" containing ~2 GB software and personal settings in ~20min. - You can install additional software and/or change configuration settings for each client using simple bash scripts which can be installed via RPM during autoinstallation. These scripts "ask" the LDAP server (or just look into a directory on your server) for other scripts and execute them as root. (Have a look at my answer to Mike's mail for some details).
/me likes 5 -as this covers all your needs without increasing expenses. But it needs some linux knowledge (at least for bash).
If only I had the time... I could probably do this but I don't get paided to do this, just to keep my job.
And now a bit advertisement: the OpenSchoolServer in version 2.6.1 might help you in this area -as it already contains: - a free Imaging system for Windows (and even Linux) workstations - Autoinstallation with different profiles (Linux-Workstation (dualboot is possible), Terminalserver (currently not LTSP - work in progress), or X-Client) - including the scripts I mentioned in Proposal 5. - a LDAP based user and classroom management, including classroom mode, internet access rules (and filtering), and many more - Moodle, Joomla and OpenExchange included and already conecting to the LDAP server, so every user (student, teacher, admin, ...) who's known by the server can login - single sign in for windows workstations (for windows-, admin- and internet login) - ...
Feel free to test it ;-)
Again massive over kill! All I was is a way to simple install and maintain rooms of suse pcs with the least amount of effort as I am not the IT support.
With kind regards, Lars
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