Re: ubuntu 10.04: problems with thin clients hanging on boot
Hi, On Wed, 14 Sep 2011, john wrote: Some of my cable spans are 100 mb and there does seem to be a correlation between distance from the server and the amount of stations that hang. *Thinking out loud* I wonder if there is some work around? Is this a race condition of some sort? If so I wonder if some variation on the nbd_server sleep method above might help. I guess I'll try remove the quiet option on client boot and bump the wait to 10 seconds and see if I can gain any more insight. It would be worth checking if they are autonegotiating at 100Mbit Full Duplex (or better). If that's failing and you're getting 10Mbit/sec or half duplex, you'll be in trouble. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Help! 10.04 LTSP configuration using only one nic
Hi, On Tue, 06 Sep 2011, Jim Christiansen wrote: My old Centos LTSP server for our Library died near the end of June. My students had been playing with a new 10.04 64 setup and had it serving 32 bit fat clients, but really slowly. One of the students altered something in iptables to make it function and I wonder if this could be the problem. Grepping my history for iptables shows: 49 sudo iptables --table nat --append POSTROUTING --jump MASQUERADE --source 192.168.1.0/24 50 sudo sh -c 'iptables-save /etc/ltsp/nat' The commands are to enable network address translation on routed traffic which is going through the LTSP server and which is coming from the 192.168.1.0/24 subnet. The second command saves it so that it gets enabled again after a reboot. If you open /etc/ltsp/nat you should see the full firewall config. This was done, apparently, to allow the system to function with one nic. If your LTSP server is a single-interface server and your router is a separate unit, also on 192.168.1.0/24 which seems likely, then this is probably not what you want to do. What I'd ordinarily suggest with 1 interface is to configure DHCP to point the clients at the router as default gateway and let it do the NAT. To fix this you could just comment out the nat command above from /etc/ltsp/nat and reboot. In fact, I'm not sure it's wise to run iptables at all on a 1-interface LTSP server so you might want to comment out that entire file and reboot. The system is sitting on a 100 megabit network with 26 clients. Only 1/3 to 2/3 of the clients will boot right off. The others will linger with 4 four little streaming dots in the middle of the screen for minutes until the log in screen appears or they fail with errors: echo 0 /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs disables this message. INFO: task modprobe:436 blocked for more than 120 seconds. echo 0 ... same as 1st line INFO: task udev-configure-:936 blocked for more than 120 seconds. echo 0 ...same as 1st line INO: taskhdparm:1020 blocked for more than 120 seconds. echo 0 ...same as 1st line INFO: task S32ltsp-client-:1027 blocked for more than 120 seconds. So it appears that: 1. The initial PXE DHCP works. 2. The kernel loads over the network and a root filesystem (possibly initramfs or an NFS root) is mounted. 3. The running kernel is trying to load do load a module (modprobe) which is timing out. At a guess, perhaps it's not getting a response from the remote filesystem. If you can work out the IP address of this client and run sudo tcpdump -n -i eth0 host ip_of_client you may be able to see the packets being sent to the server from the client and get an idea what's going wrong. You might see that the firewall is blocking incoming NFS mount attempts. Also look at the logs on the server for anything relevant. It doesn't seem any better it I boot fewer clients or more... They just don't all start up reliably. Hmm. Unreliable suggests something more like you're hitting a limit (ie some work until you hit that limit), or something is working contingent on a bit of luck. One possibility is that some NFS connections are getting through the firewall rules and some aren't. NFS uses a range of ports, so trying disabling iptables is worth a go. Let us know how you get on. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Planning for summer work/next school year
Hi, oops, I should clarify this: On Tue, 31 May 2011, Gavin McCullagh wrote: Gnome losing all settings (due to gconfd problem I suspect), ... until you logout and login again. It doesn't permanently lose settings. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Mentoring for improving wiki pages?
Hi, On Thu, 13 May 2010, David Groos wrote: Here are some possible 'sticky points'. There might be some good wiki pages on them now, but when I first tackled these tasks, they were lacking. They are critical to many school setups. --iTALC setup --Basic squid proxy setup --Localapps setup --Backup System --using flash --using java --setting up file-sharing systems for one's classes This is a great idea. I'm not that directly involved in an LTSP network any more, so I'm very out of date on that. However, I do run a squid server and I do run backups so if I can be of help in that part, I'm happy to. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Monday = no more Internet in localapps????
Hi, On Mon, 26 Apr 2010, Joseph Hartman wrote: Anyways, I initially connected my XP laptop to the LTSP network and couldn't get Internet, which means NAT wasn't working. Do your thin clients generally get their internet access via NAT on your LTSP server? Then I changed to our alternate DNS server address in dhcpd.conf on the server, renewed the DHCP lease on my laptop it gets Internet! I tried it with an Ubuntu laptop and it works too. So it appears that the DNS may be your problem. Are you running a DNS server on the thin client server or do you connect upstream to DNS servers? It simplify your life to install a simple DNS server like dnsmasq on your thin client server and point both the server itself and the clients at your dnsmasq implementation. You can then just change what dns servers dnsmasq points at and every client will get the new dns settings transparently. It would be worth your while learning how to use tcpdump and or wireshark as those will help you enormously to debug these things, eg. run tcpdump on the client on port 53 and watch the DNS requests go out and responses come back, etc. The clients still don't get Internet though. I thought this might mean the problem was with the first DNS server, but I restarted the DHCP server, restarted the clients with new IP addresses (and I assume the updated DNS server address), and I still have the same problem. If I don't use localapps the Internet works just fine. One would have thought the DNS would update to all clients alright. You need to verify that. Assuming DNS access goes through the server, you can run this command on the server: sudo tcpdump -ni eth0 udp port 53 and host ip_of_client which will show you all DNS traffic passing through eth0 (change to whatever interface points toward your thin clients) with your client's IP address. The other IP address on the traffic will show you what DNS server the client is talking to. Finally, it seems like firefox as a localapp is taking way longer to load in the first place than it used to. I'm not sure what would cause this, but if any of you have any insight I'd appreciate it. I'm waiting on a call back from the district and I'd love to know what to ask of them (if anything). If there's no net access or DNS timeouts, that might well delay firefox's start-up as it checks for updates, etc. P.S. how do I see what the client's network information is and force a DHCP lease renew? When I use terminal on a client I just see the server's information. You should be able to set the password in the chroot doing something like this: sudo -i chroot /opt/ltsp/i386/ passwd and then you need to rebuild the NBD root image. I'm afraid I'm a little out of touch with LTSP so I can't recall how that's done. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Is ubuntu trying to resolve localhost to an ipv6 address?
Hi, On Wed, 21 Apr 2010, john wrote: I think that's not the behaviour I want since I am not running ipv6 and I don't need the extra chatter on the network. If I change /etc/modprobe.d/aliases to read alias net-pf-10 ipv6 off will bad things happen? Probably not, but disabling IPv6 is really not necessary. You could just put a not ip6 filter in wireshark. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Is ubuntu trying to resolve localhost to an ipv6 address?
Hi, On Tue, 20 Apr 2010, john wrote: I am troubleshooting some network issues. Running wireshark and watching traffic I notice I have many messages like this: DNS Standard query localhost.vanguard.vashonsd.org DNS Standard query response, no such name This is normal enough. The process is usually: 1. The resolver will attempt to find an IPv6 address for the name. 2. If an IPv6 address is returned, see is there a route to it. 3. Attempt to connect over IPv6. If any of the above fail, do the same for IPv4. So a DNS query for records is pretty normal. If you don't have IPv6 set up, step 2 will fail, even where a address is returned. /etc/hosts looks like 127.0.0.1 localhost 127.0.1.1 vbuntu vbuntu.vanguard.vashonsd.org 10.114.5.50 paul.vanguard.vashonsd.org paul my /etc/nsswitch.conf file has this entry hostsfiles dns wins So when /etc/hosts is checked for a record, that fails and a DNS request is made. What exactly is going on here? It looks like the server is trying to query a IP6 FQDN for localhost. Yup. This is pretty normal. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: FLASH PLAYER OR EQUIVALENT
On Mon, 08 Mar 2010, Yves Pennec wrote: I finally found my way through Synaptic. Thanks to all who replied, it was really helpful. Now I'd like to use my wifi n dongle (EMTEK EKCOWI300) but could not find a clue on where to find a driver, for the time being, I have bought a 5m LAN cable, but aesthically speaking it is no what I want. Could you post the output of the command lspci -v so we can see the description of your card? Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: FLASH PLAYER OR EQUIVALENT
Hi, On Sat, 06 Mar 2010, Yves Pennec wrote: I have shifted to Linux-Ubuntu. Problem : can't read videos with Firefox or Chrome. I have found some sofwtare (like Adobe Flash Player) but I am totally unable to install it. Can anyone send me a detailed step by step procedure ? Generally in Ubuntu, the way to install software is using the Synaptic Package Manager under the System-Administration menu. 1. Start Synaptic (you'll probably be asked for your password). 2. Click search and enter flashplugin-nonfree 3. If it finds it, you need to right-click on it and click Mark for installation. On the toolbar, click Apply. The package should download and install itself. 4. If the package isn't found, you might need to click Settings-Repositories and tick the boxes to enable the universe and multiverse repositories and click apply on the toolbar. On windows it was so easy. When you change operating sytem you'll naturally find things are a little unfamiliar. In Ubuntu, packages are generally installed using the package manager. This may seem a little unusual, but if you explore the program, you'll see how powerful it is. In that one program you download, add and remove all software in the Ubuntu archive (which is a very large amount of software). Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Looking for recomendations: scanner
Hi David, On Thu, 18 Feb 2010, David Groos wrote: I'm looking to get a scanner or two in my classroom and want to get something that works well with Edubuntu thin clients. I'm not very knowledgeable about scanners and would appreciate you sharing your experience and advice. Not looking for anything high end but also want something that is fairly durable. I know that scanner and durable are basically at opposite ends of the spectrum, but I'm sure some are tougher than others. Scanners that work with Linux work through SANE (which is to scanners what CUPS is to printers). There is a device list on the site: http://www.sane-project.org/ The trouble is that I'm not sure you can just hook up a scanner to a thin client and expect it to work -- unless you're running the scanning application as a local app. It's possible that since my last look ltsp now transparently deals with scanners, in which case forget my concerns. As far as I recall, SANE is network capable, so you can have a scanner on a particular machine or machines and let people connect to it over the network to scan something. This might be a nice way to do things if you have a room full of thin clients which occasionally need to scan things. http://penguin-breeder.org/sane/saned/ Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
flash plugin becoming less important?
Hi, I've been reading recently of how various vendors, notably Google and Apple are pushing to use new features of HTML5 to avoid the Flash plugin for situations like video playing. Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome are all implementing HTML5 at present. http://lifehacker.com/5416100/how-html5-will-change-the-way-you-use-the-web Youtube is already testing videos played through HTML5 instead of Flash and by all accounts the performance is markedly better -- though only Safari and Chrome are supported just now. http://www.youtube.com/html5 This seems like good news for LTSP and the Linux desktop in general. What must likely be the most common piece of proprietary software on linux desktops may become less of a requirement. I for one will crack open a bottle of bubbly (beer) when I can remove the flash plugin from my desktop. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: How to fix RAID1 array
Hi, On Thu, 07 Jan 2010, Todd O'Bryan wrote: I have my student home folders on a RAID1 array. One of the hard drives seems to have become corrupted--I'm getting Buffer IO errors. Ouch. Is that a hardware RAID card or an MD linux software RAID one? Is the hard drive definitely bad so I should get a new one, or should I try reformatting it and seeing if it works again? Could you paste a selection of the errors into an email? It may not be easy to tell, but it helps to have the full detail. Either way, how do I do that? Is there a way to run the partitioner part of the alternate install CD without running the whole installer? Will the RAID array automatically pick up the reformat of the current drive or a new drive if I have to get one? If it's hardware RAID, you generally just determine which disk is dead, replace it and let it resync (depending on the exact detail you may need to shutdown or not). If you're using software RAID you'd probably need to work out which is the bad disk, take the server down, replace the disk, boot back up, create identical sizes partitions on the new disk and add those partitions to the existing RAID arrays. Linux will then sync them with the system running. Anyone got a link to TFM that I should R before I attempt this? http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO.html man mdadm Commands like: ls -l /dev/md* mdadm --help sudo mdadm --detail /dev/md0 mdadm /dev/md0 --add /dev/sdb1 will likely be what you'll need. Needless to say, be very careful what you do. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: How to fix RAID1 array
Hi, On Thu, 07 Jan 2010, Gavin McCullagh wrote: Anyone got a link to TFM that I should R before I attempt this? http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO.html This appears to be the up to date version: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/linux-raid Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: How to fix RAID1 array
On Thu, 07 Jan 2010, Scott Balneaves wrote:
_ _ ____ _ _
| _ \ /\ / | |/ / | | | __ \ / |
| |_) | / \ | || ' /| | | | |__) | (___
| _ / /\ \| || | | | | ___/ \___ \
| |_) / \ || . \| |__| | | ) |
|/_/\_\_|_|\_\\/|_||_/
before you do ANYTHING else.
Of course I meant to imply the same ;-)
Gavin
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Re: How/why does network-manager interfere with /etc/resolve.conf
Hi, On Mon, 07 Dec 2009, john wrote: Doing apt-get remove network-manager removed network-manager and network-manager-gnome but left ubuntu-desktop That's good to know. Thanks, Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: How/why does network-manager interfere with /etc/resolve.conf
Hi, On Mon, 07 Dec 2009, Scott Balneaves wrote: For people interested in leaving NetworkMangler^H^H^H^H^H^H^HManager around for it's ease of use for wireless, but looking for a more command-liney way to interact with it, I've packaged cnetworkmanager, and written a manpage for it. It's in my ppa: https://edge.launchpad.net/~sbalneav/+archive/ppa Long have I sought after such a tool. Thanks! Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: How/why does network-manager interfere with /etc/resolve.conf
Hi, On Thu, 03 Dec 2009, john wrote: I guess I don't understand how network-manager, dbus-subsystem, etc, etc, work with regards to networking. I feel like it's getting harder and harder to figure out who's in charge I feel your pain. You get to know how to use a whole heap of config files and commands and then the goal posts move 40 yards left. Perhaps ironically, this is all done in the name of simplicity for users -- so they don't have to edit the config files. I have to say it has helped me when I was able to point and click a cisco VPN set up through network manager in thirty seconds. I did manage to set it up using the config files too, but it was definitely quicker and easier using network manager. If Ubuntu is to be a real desktop solution, your marketing director needs to be able to set up a VPN with either no or minimal help over the phone from his IT staff. Config files are not an option. Windows went through a similar process back around v3.1 - v95. Up to 3.1, practically every application (opera, netscape, paint shop pro, ...) and even Windows itself had its own .ini file. Some of those settings were configurable in the UI but many of them you just had to open the .ini file and edit it yourself. As a geek, I used to like that simple way to get straight to the application's settings. Then the windows registry became the place to store all this. I never got the hang of it¹. Gnome went through a similar thing with gconf which I've never really gotten the hang of either. On the other hand, I very rarely need to know anything about it. It's good and bad at the same time. Your life is simplified until you want to do something they haven't (yet) implemented simplicity for. Gavin ¹ Shortly afterward, I bought my first PC running Windows 98 first edition and the horror of it made me try Redhat 6.1. I haven't actively used a Windows desktop since. -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: How likely to work would a Jaunty-to-Karmic server upgrade, be?
Hi, On Tue, 24 Nov 2009, David Groos wrote: Thanks Gavin for sending your ideas! See below for comment. == Try Manual TFTP Download == snip Didn't really get this so tried the next idea... Fair enough, sorry. I should have explained better. Basically, it looked (before) like the TFTP transfer was timing out so I was trying to see could you run it manually. Anyway, that appears to be working now. == Watch tftp traffic on the server == snip sudo tcpdump -i eth0 'udp port 69' snip After school I again was able to look at things and I tried your second idea. Now, strangely enough, the client boot quite a bit further than before and I hadn't (purposefully) done any changes, just booted the server, opened the terminal and typed in above command, then tried to boot the thin client. Thanks to my cell phone camera I recently got I easily recorded the client screen and server screen and have posted them on my sitehttp://plonedev.mpls.k12.mn.us/gcos09/Members/mrg/edubuntu-images/. Your tcpdump output is showing you what is a fairly normal tftp conversation for a computer booting with pxelinux. The tftp server serves all its files from /var/lib/tftpboot so those paths are within their. --- The client first asks for the file pxelinux.0, then checks for a sequence of boot config files (in /pxelinux.cfg/) based on its mac address (00-08-02-e4-47-80 is likely the mac address of your client) and its IP address (C0A800F3 is hex for 192.168.0.243, C0A800 is hex for 192.168.0., etc). Eventually it takes the default file which tells it what kernel to boot if none of the mac or ip-specific hosts are present. The client then downloads /ltsp/i386/vmlinuz (the kernel) and /ltsp/i386/initrd.img (the initial ramdisk) and finally /ltsp/i386/lts.conf (the ltsp setting for individual clients). --- Annoyingly you can't see the responses coming back from the server as they're on a random other port. You could change the command to: sudo tcpdump -i eth0 'host 192.168.0.243' to see all data transferred from/to that host. Anyway, TFTP seems to be working now. I'd say your problem is in the errors mounting /dev/nbd0 and /rofs. It's been a while since I've used a LTSP some I'm a little rusty on the details now. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: How likely to work would a Jaunty-to-Karmic server upgrade, be?
On Mon, 23 Nov 2009, David Groos wrote: I've attempted a Jaunty to Karmic LTSP server upgrade. Things weren't completely smooth but I was able to do the upgrade without too much problem. However, when I test boot a thin client, the screen goes to its regular point of the last line saying DHCP (at this point it usually grabs an image) but after less than .5 of a second it says: PXE-E32: TFTP open timeout then says, TFTP... (with the number of dots increasing slowly). Thanks Harry for the link to the page at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1309835 I did what they recommended. TC still don't boot. Still no luck--thin clients don't want to boot. I plugged my laptop into the proper nic on the server and it gets an IP, so I think DHCP is working. Not sure where to look from here. Any ideas? A couple of suggestions: == Try Manual TFTP Download == Could you install a tftp client package (tftp, atftp, tftp-hpa) and try downloading the images which the dhcp server is handing out? You should be able to look in the dhcp config and work out what the correct kernel and ramdisk images are, then download them with tftp (from a laptop if possible, not from the server). This will verify that your clients can actually download the TFTP image (that's what appears to be timing out). == Watch tftp traffic on the server == You could also watch the tftp traffic on the server by running (on the server): sudo tcpdump -i eth0 'udp port 69' (assuming eth0 is the interface which points at your thin clients, if not change that). Then boot a thin client and see what packets go back and forth. If you don't see requests, they're not getting to the server for some reason. If you see requests and no responses, that might indicate your tftp server is broken. Let us know how you get on. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: why is firefox such a CPU hog?
Hi, On Mon, 16 Nov 2009, john wrote: I just got to wondering (in an idle sort of way) why applications like openoffice which is so much bigger than firefox seem to run just fine with 24 copies open and firefox doesn't? I'd say it's down to the complexity and number of documents that the two will open. The vast bulk of users of openoffice have extremely simple documents which, if you saved them as open document and extracted the XML, firefox would probably quite happily display. The number of documents which OpenOffice users would have which has 50 images, several of which are probably animated as well as an embedded video or flash applet, is probably quite small. I might be wrong but, I'd guess that if 24 of your users had a single firefox tab open with a locally stored, plain text webpage with some formatting and a couple of images, you'd probably find firefox behaving very well. I guess I am still trying to grok Firefox/flash as the thing which makes Linux show its rough edges. You're not seeing rough edges in linux, you're seeing rough edges in Flash. If you had a Windows machine with 25 users running firefox+flash (or IE+flash) on it, I suspect you'd see problems there too. It is possible (likely even) that Flash is better tuned for Windows than linux but sadly, the only people who can address that are Adobe (or possibly gnash, who are trying). Most people seem to be saying that Flash is likely the problem. I know for a fact that flash loads in a lot more instances than people realise. If your users could be convinced, it would be interesting to remove flash entirely for a day, just to see what effect it has. If you didn't see an improvement, then there's something wrong with firefox and we have some chance of addressing that. If Flash is the problem, adding the Flashblock plugin would be a half-way point, where flash only loads on those pages which users want it to. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: why is firefox such a CPU hog?
Hi, On Mon, 16 Nov 2009, Scott Balneaves wrote: The problem here isn't LTSP. LTSP can't manufacture cpu cycles out of thin air. If a badly behaved application uses up all your cpu cycles, there's nothing LTSP can do about that: it's just a way of running remote X. I work on a 2.8GHz P4 and I find Firefox to be a bit slow at times. This is partially my fault, I tend to have 50-100 tabs open at times. One thing I've noted that improves both the performance and stability of Firefox is Flashblock. There are many functional uses of flash, such as youtube. However, a substantial number of flash objects which get loaded are either invisible to the user (I can only guess they're used for tracking) or are adverts which the users is probably not very interested in. If you install Flashblock, the users have to choose to load flash where they want it and it will not be loaded otherwise. I would suggest installing flashblock (it's packaged in Ubuntu) and see if that helps. Another interesting idea which was mentioned recently on a list I'm on was placing a users firefox cache storage in shared memory instead of on the disk. This would not reduce user CPU usage, but it might free up the disk in some instances which might make things feel a little snappier. The Firefox 3 Optimisation page says turn off caching which would also have this effect, though you might be downloading a lot more data if you did that without a decent caching proxy server. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Development workflow, and official Edubuntu PPA's...
Hi, On Tue, 10 Nov 2009, Jonathan Carter wrote: I think it's brilliant, and contributions to the PPA's could be sponsored for universe if needed and also count towards the person's goal to become a MOTU if they wish to do so. It also allows developers to get fixes to people with problems who are willing to test them faster. I'm all for it and I think it could be a great aspect of the Edubuntu development process. Agreed. It's rare enough that I have suggested code changes but it would be nice to be able to put packages somewhere for people on the rare occasions that I do. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Best way(s) to speed up lab?
Hi, On Sun, 30 Aug 2009, Harry Sweet wrote: Is there any specific switch you recommend? We're somewhat caught between a tight budget and a need for good functional switches. Over time, we've found the D-Link DES-3550 and DES-3526 are affordable, stable and functional. They do multicast properly, we can add layer 2 filters (eg we can block rogue dhcp servers). In my experience, the DGS-12XX (the G means fully gigabit) have problems with multicast, don't do filtering and have no serial port. Those among others issues have led us to write them off. I can't comment on the other brands as I don't know them well. Needless to say, Cisco are the industry favourite, but come at a cost. If I were buying from another vendor, I would still require the same features, such as layer-2 filtering, serial port (not just a web interface), gigabit uplinks, snmp, vlans, spanning tree with edge/portfast, radius. Apologies if some of these features are not familiar ground for you. Our choice of these features is based on the fact that we actively use them. If you don't need them, that's fair enough. It's most important to make sure you have a gigabit backbone, ie that the links between all switches are GigE. If you have a 100Mb/sec line in there, everything will be constricted by it. School starts next week, so for now I just have to work from memory. Fair enough. We started last year with 2 gigs ram only. Lagging would consistently start after ~16 machines logged in. I could see us hitting virtual memory at the same time. more memory solved that. You have 8GB of ram now. Is this a 64-bit linux or are you using a large memory kernel? Just make sure your kernel is able to use the full 8GB. Not all workstations would lag, either. But all apps on lagging boxes slow way down. The machines don't lock up, just get very droopy. I'll watch that this fall. I wonder what the lagging ones have in common. Are all the clients on the same switch? Is it possible the lagging ones are on one switch and the free ones are on another? I imagine when you had the previous RAM-related issues that would have affected every client? But Firefox seemed to always be an issue. Especially since kids like to use it to waste time playing on line video games, or watching videos. Do you have flash installed? Is it a requirement? It seems to be a big problem quite often (and it could be removed if you wanted). The flashblock plugin can reduce the amount of spurious flash adverts that get loaded. I should be able to make that a lot less interesting this year if I can get my firewall/whitelist working. One possibility you might look into is to make the browsers use a squid web proxy for web access. Squid allows you to make all manner of decisions about what is and is not allowed and for whom, eg you could block swf (flash) files on all but certain white-listed sites, for your thin clients. It is awkward to configure every browser with proxy settings, so you'd want to either use interception proxying or at least use a WPAD script: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Proxy_Autodiscovery_Protocol Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Best way(s) to speed up lab?
Hi, On Sat, 29 Aug 2009, Harry Sweet wrote: Which of these things would likely improve performance the most? If you're having a serious, repeating lag problem, it sounds like it is caused by a specific bottleneck. You can optimise various things and you might get lucky, but there's a reasonable chance you won't. Ideally, you need to pin down the cause. Someone else has suggested cacti, I would have suggested munin though I'm not sure there's much difference between them. This will give you 5-minute averaged details of various metrics of our server performance. The trouble is, if your lag only lasts 20-30 seconds, the data you need to see (eg 100Mbit/sec network usage) may be averaged out over the 5-minute intervals. Could you describe the lag in a bit more detail, eg Is it always when everyone's using firefox? Does it affect all thin clients at once, or each one at a time? Does it only affect those who are using firefox? If someone is using OpenOffice instead is that affected? Does it only affect firefox, eg are the GNOME menus frozen too? Can you alttab to switch application? More importantly, do you have any way to reproduce the problem? I can imagine you may not, but that makes it quite tough to work out whether the problem is fixed or not. 2. Lose the GUI on the server or at least drop Gnome for something faster I presume you mean the GUI everyone uses on the thin clients. That does change a lot of the involved software, which might potentially contain your problem. 3. Run Firefox as a local app If _firefox_ is lagging on the server. 4. Get a gigabit switch to replace our 10 year old 100meg switch. For what it's worth, in my work-place we don't use LTSP but we do use the network pretty heavily and do various useful things like multicast (we have about 70 switches). It depends on your budget, but we generally buy higher-end 100Mbit/sec switches with Gigabit uplinks, rather than cheap gigabit switches. I think that might suit you if you're on a budget and it adds the benefit that even as many as 9 clients going at full tilt cannot choke the uplink to the server. As you are now (or in principal with all gigabit clients), any one rogue client can choke the server. Besides, I doubt you have gigabit network cards in your clients. Some switches can be configured to send snmp trap messages when an interface's usage goes above a particular rate. 5. Raid or SCSI disks Always a possibility I guess. 6.. Something I haven't thought of . There have been reports of bad delays in the ext3 filesystem in certain situations. Some of this has been improved in the 2.6.30 linux kernel. Something like that could be http://blog.gavinmc.com/?p=86 Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Directory tools for Edubuntu server
Hi folks, On Wed, 17 Jun 2009, Jordan Erickson wrote: Please comment on the existing bug here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-system-tools/+bug/259163 It's been open for a while - I would think it'd be a very easy thing to fix, but I guess nobody has gotten around to taking care of it yet. This would help your problem I've been reading over the code and have worked out some amount of what's going on though we're not yet at the point of a fix. I've also reported it upstream to the gnome developers as for whatever reason that hadn't happened up to now. That has elicited one early response with some hints as to how it might be fixed. Hopefully we'll get it fixed. http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=593107 Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: I got NAT set up
Hi, On Wed, 19 Aug 2009, Joseph Hartman wrote: Cheers to Gavin and anyone else who helped noobify the How to NAT page. I had very little trouble this morning setting it up and where I did get bogged down I took the time to add some clarifying remarks on the How To so hopefully others will have an even easier time than I enjoyed. Thanks both for the positive feedback and the clarifications. Good luck with the local apps! Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Quick question for enabling NAT in LTSP (or edubuntu) - iptables details
Hi, On Wed, 19 Aug 2009, Patrick McKnight wrote: Regarding the eth1 hard code, I first retrieve the non-LTSP NIC from ip route and then assign the LTSP NIC to the alternative NIC. In short, eth1 is not hard coded. Sorry, I must have misread that. Now the NIC code will work provided a server is not configured with multiple NIC's (i.e., eth2, eth3, etc.). I did not consider that scenario - perhaps I better. Well, I'd say a 3-NIC LTSP server is a pretty unusual thing but I guess it's no harm if you have time. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Cloning: FOG, dd, Clonezilla was Re: golden server
Hi, On Thu, 30 Jul 2009, R. Scott Belford wrote: For what it's worth, I manage all of my images with a Debian netbook running DRBL and Clonezilla. I can provide imaging services, fat client booting, thin-client booting, and net-installs to *any* computer that can pxe boot. Clonezilla is great for keeping test images, or for doing pxe installs to a virtualized server. While the subject of cloning is on the go, we recently started using FOG in the college I work at. It took a bit of work (mostly to get the network doing multicast properly), but at this point we have a FOG server which - keeps track of all of our desktops, what their hardware is and which image they're running - can pull an image from a desktop in around an hour (depending on image size) - can multicast clone 60+ windows desktops in two hours, including the time for windows to come up and work through its start process, join the domain, etc. - naturally can also do linux or dual boot clones. - re-image a single machine at command of an admin - can add windows printers to a group of machines - can shutdown all the windows machines, log people out after specific periods, etc. - wake groups of desktops using wake on lan - run a disk check or ram disk on any machine or group of machines - and lots more http://fogproject.org/ We're highly pleased with it. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: ltsp local apps + nat + ....
Hi, On Thu, 23 Jul 2009, Scott Balneaves wrote: https://edge.launchpad.net/~edubuntu-members/+members#active Heck: Gavin, who answers more questions on this list than anyone, isn't even a member! Gavin! What's up with that, dude? :) I don't mean to be smart, but what is the real significance of that list? I can join it if that helps anything but it's not clear to me what that would change. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Hiring Edubuntu Staff
Hi, On Thu, 23 Jul 2009, R. Scott Belford wrote: For what it is worth, it is now nearly a year since I tracked down every key Canonical employee I could find at Linuxworld 2008, both at the conference and at after-hours events, to communicate two messages: the state of Edubuntu and its User community was having an *adverse* *impact* on the adoption of gnu/linux in education, particularly in thin-client environments,and that two people should be hired - Gavin and Asmo. As Ace observed, he actually thought Gavin worked for Canonical. I used to think so, too. Asmo has been instrumental at greeting and inspiring new users and help-seekers on this list, and he likes Frank Zappa. You're very kind. To be honest though, I don't really do that much. I used to be more involved as I was running a local school's Edubuntu setup but I don't really have as much time for it any more. All I have really ever done in this community is answer some emails, report some bugs and occasionally put small bits in the wiki. None of it is very technically challenging and even that work has waned recently. I'm not a developer on edubuntu, though I've long intended to get more involved at that end of things. An awful lot more work has been and is put in by guys like Scott, Oliver, Jordan, Stéphane, Jonathan(s), Asmo, Vagrant and David(s) to name a few. There are certainly others too -- it probably says it all that I can't even name everyone. If a list of people worth hiring were drawn up, I suspect there would be plenty of names on the list before mine. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
ltsp local apps + nat + ....
Hi, I received some emails overnight offering an alternative (simpler?) setup for getting internet access to your thin client's local apps. http://www.suares.an/index.php?page_id=1news_id=253#news-top https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ThinClientHowtoNAT I'm not that convinced it's really simpler, but I guess it's no great harm having alternatives. Some more feedback on local apps is apparently here: http://hartmansblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/ltsp-local-apps-progress-or-lack.html It's a little frustrating to have people complain on their blog about how bad a wiki is, but yet not actually take the five minutes to correct it or even draw attention to the problem in the community. However, I know the real developers have much greater frustrations. I have attempted to clarify the issues. One issue seems to be that people don't realise that this will be necessary at all and find firefox can't get internet access. I've added a note to the bottom of these pages to state that explicitly. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuLTSP/LTSPLocalAppsJaunty https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTSPLocalAppSetup I hope that's okay. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Links in wiki
Hi, On Wed, 22 Jul 2009, Jordan Mantha wrote: And why is the page that Gavin made (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ThinClientHowtoNAT) in CategoryCleanup? Mine is too becuase I used his page as an example. The problem is that wiki.ubuntu.com is not for user documentation, but rather development team coordination, etc. help.ubuntu.com/community/ is the user documentation wiki. I know it's a bit confusing because you found other LTSP pages on wiki.ubuntu.com, but the CategoryCleanup indicates that those pages are flagged for being moved to the user documentation wiki or removed. This appears to be my bad. I hadn't realised the significance of the two wikis. I didn't write the original page, but I did rewrite it and I should probably have re-created it in help.ubuntu.com. Where should it go? Here maybe? https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ThinClientHowtoNAT While we're at it, ThinClientHowtoNAT might not be the best descriptive name. Anyone have any better suggestions? Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: help with installing browser and office as local apps on LTSP
Hi, please post to the list rather than me personally. More people can help that way. Also don't attach RTF files, just paste the data into the email so it's easier to read. On Thu, 16 Apr 2009, graydebo...@tiscali.co.uk wrote: Thanks for the advice. It appears that the server can get to the sources as I have run apt-get-update and ltsp-update-image this morning without any error. When switching to the chroot it seems unable to find the on-line sources. I cannot see any evidence of the chroot looking for a proxy. I am at home now but do drag the box into work from time to time. I then set a proxy and download/update as needed because the work connection is so much faster. The output of apt-get update below clearly shows that you're not able to access the server. It's not clear to me whether this is because you have or have not set a proxy. If you need to set one, you can do export http_proxy=http://proxyserver:port apt-get update If you need to unset one you can check the environment variable is set by echo $http_proxy and look in the files in /etc/apt/ to see have you got a proxy server configured for apt. It sounds like you might have. Gavin r...@ltsp:/# apt-get update Ign cdrom://Ubuntu 8.10 _Intrepid Ibex_ - Release i386 (20081028) intrepid Release.gpg Ign cdrom://Ubuntu 8.10 _Intrepid Ibex_ - Release i386 (20081028) intrepid/main Translation-en_GB Ign cdrom://Ubuntu 8.10 _Intrepid Ibex_ - Release i386 (20081028) intrepid/ restricted Translation-en_GB Ign cdrom://Ubuntu 8.10 _Intrepid Ibex_ - Release i386 (20081028) intrepid Release Ign cdrom://Ubuntu 8.10 _Intrepid Ibex_ - Release i386 (20081028) intrepid/main Packages Ign cdrom://Ubuntu 8.10 _Intrepid Ibex_ - Release i386 (20081028) intrepid/ restricted Packages Err cdrom://Ubuntu 8.10 _Intrepid Ibex_ - Release i386 (20081028) intrepid/main Packages Please use apt-cdrom to make this CD-ROM recognized by APT. apt-get update cannot be used to add new CD-ROMs Err cdrom://Ubuntu 8.10 _Intrepid Ibex_ - Release i386 (20081028) intrepid/ restricted Packages Please use apt-cdrom to make this CD-ROM recognized by APT. apt-get update cannot be used to add new CD-ROMs Err http://security.ubuntu.com intrepid-security Release.gpg Could not resolve `security.ubuntu.com' Err http://security.ubuntu.com intrepid-security/main Translation-en_GB Could not resolve `security.ubuntu.com' Err http://security.ubuntu.com intrepid-security/restricted Translation-en_GB Could not resolve `security.ubuntu.com' Err http://security.ubuntu.com intrepid-security/universe Translation-en_GB Could not resolve `security.ubuntu.com' Err http://security.ubuntu.com intrepid-security/multiverse Translation-en_GB Could not resolve `security.ubuntu.com' Err http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid Release.gpg Could not resolve `gb.archive.ubuntu.com' Err http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Translation-en_GB Could not resolve `gb.archive.ubuntu.com' Err http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/restricted Translation-en_GB Could not resolve `gb.archive.ubuntu.com' Err http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/universe Translation-en_GB Could not resolve `gb.archive.ubuntu.com' Err http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/multiverse Translation-en_GB Could not resolve `gb.archive.ubuntu.com' Err http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid-updates Release.gpg Could not resolve `gb.archive.ubuntu.com' Err http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid-updates/main Translation-en_GB Could not resolve `gb.archive.ubuntu.com' Err http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid-updates/restricted Translation-en_GB Could not resolve `gb.archive.ubuntu.com' Err http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid-updates/universe Translation-en_GB Could not resolve `gb.archive.ubuntu.com' Err http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid-updates/multiverse Translation-en_GB Could not resolve `gb.archive.ubuntu.com' Reading package lists... Done W: Failed to fetch http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/intrepid/ Release.gpg Could not resolve `gb.archive.ubuntu.com' W: Failed to fetch http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/intrepid/main/i18n /Translation-en_GB.bz2 Could not resolve `gb.archive.ubuntu.com' W: Failed to fetch http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/intrepid/ restricted/i18n/Translation-en_GB.bz2 Could not resolve `gb.archive.ubuntu.com' W: Failed to fetch http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/intrepid/universe/ i18n/Translation-en_GB.bz2 Could not resolve `gb.archive.ubuntu.com' W: Failed to fetch http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/intrepid/ multiverse/i18n/Translation-en_GB.bz2 Could not resolve `gb.archive.ubuntu.com' W: Failed to fetch http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/intrepid-updates/ Release.gpg Could not resolve `gb.archive.ubuntu.com' W: Failed to fetch http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/intrepid-updates/ main/i18n/Translation-en_GB.bz2 Could not
Re: Default Desktop and input method setting in Edubuntu
Hi, On Thu, 16 Apr 2009, Elanjelian Venugopal wrote: Whenever I create a new user, it appears, I need to yet again set the everything from the desktop, to resolution, to default fonts, to input method. (The default language is Tamil, and SCIM is used to type in Tamil characters.) Typically, this takes about 5 minutes each. There are around 400 students in the school, and I'd need to create that many users. You can be pretty certain that what happens when you make the setting is that you are creating or modifying a file in the user's home directory. At a guess, this is probably somewhere in .gconf or gconfd, though I don't know gnome that well. If you can work out what change(s) are made, there are two approaches: a. You could automate making the same change for future users in a script. b. You could try and set the default in /etc/gconf/ to be your chosen settings, thereby avoiding setting per user. Here's what I'd suggest you do first: 1. Create two new users, eg. user1, user2. 2. Login as user1. Wait 120 seconds. 3. Make one change you want. 4. From a command line run: find ~ -mtime -2 this will tell you what files in the home directory have been modified in the past 2 minutes. 5. Compare the resulting file(s) in user1's and user2's home dirs to see what change was made. This might be editing a file or creating a new file. 6. Follow steps 2-5 for each other change, noting what file(s) get modified and how. Once you have this information, you can look at options (a) and (b) above. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: help with installing browser and office as local apps on LTSP
On Wed, 15 Apr 2009, graydebo...@tiscali.co.uk wrote: Now I get stuck, sudo chroot /opt/ltsp/i386 apt-get install xterm runs OK but changing the command to sudo chroot /opt/ltsp/i386 apt-get install firefox or variations such as mozilla-firefox return couldn't find package firefox. You might want to first run sudo chroot /opt/ltsp/i386 apt-get update to make sure you have up-to-date lists of available packages. Then get a shell in the chroot with sudo chroot /opt/ltsp/i386 and run: apt-cache search firefox If you don't get back a firefox package then maybe you have the wrong sources available. From within the chroot, send us the output of cat /etc/apt/sources.list I tried to sneak up on the problem and downloaded the open office rpm moved to it the chroot and tried to unpack it there. No rpm icommand in the chroot (not a big surprise its pretty sparse in there). Ubuntu is a debian-based system, so RPM isn't used. You would want to download a.deb file and install with dpkg -i However, I wouldn't recommend this at all. apt-get install firefox is the correct way to do it, you just seem to be missing some package sources. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Which Squid?
On Tue, 10 Mar 2009, David Groos wrote: 2009/03/10 22:51:46| parseConfigFile: line 113 unrecognized: 'max_filedesc 0' My memory is a little hazy but I don't think this setting (which places no limit on the file descriptors) is only allowed in squid3, but not in squid 2.X. I think you need to comment it out. In squid v2.x on debian, this setting is made in /etc/default/squid. You should probably set it to 1024 and up it if you start seeing logs that you're running out of file descriptors. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Which Squid?
Hi, On Sun, 08 Mar 2009, David Groos wrote: I´ve got an Edubuntu/LTSP setup and I´m working on getting squid going and having quite a challenge with it--too much specialized/unknown vocabulary for me. I don´t need squid for caching of objects since I´m using thin clients, Huh? I'm not sure I follow you here. Every firefox user, even on the one machine, will have their own small firefox cache directory -- they won't be shared. This is not at all a replacement for squid's caching. but want to use it for coordinating white lists with different groups of users. I thought before I invest myself further in learning squid I should first decide which version to use. Also, I´m going to be using squidguard as an add-on. I understand that squid-stable is at 2.6 currently and that is what I was working on.However, should I use this version, install/invest in 2.7, move up to 3.0 or 3.1? I would appreciate anyone´s opinion on this! The Squid package in Ubuntu Hardy is squid v2.6 and squid3 is available as a separate package. I tried squid3 and it segfaulted repeatedly on me. I first tried backporting the later squid3 package from intrepid. That segfaulted too, so I'm using the default v2.6 version which is far more reliable. I'd like to look at v2.7, but I don't wish to maintain a backport if I can avoid it so I stuck with v2.6. We're quite a busy site -- our squid instance peaks at about 150 requests per second. Maybe a quieter site might not have the same stability issues. If you don't mind maintaining a custom compile, v2.7 is probably better than v2.6 but personally I'm holding off v3. Getting squid working is fairly straightforward. Tuning it to work well and maximise the cache hits can be quite involved. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Fwd: nic with bootrom
Hi, On Thu, 05 Mar 2009, Jordan Mantha wrote: Ray, I'm forwarding your email on to the Edubuntu Users mailing list, they'll have much better suggestions than me. To the list, make sure to CC Ray as I'm not sure if he's subscribed or not, thanks. Martin Herweg certainly looked after us well: http://www.lug-marl.de/kmLinuxTSE.html He's based in Germany. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Server Suddenly Started Hunging up
Hi, On Tue, 03 Mar 2009, Nicolas Roussi wrote: I am guessing that it is. I recently configured a bind9 server on the network which is also the LDAP server but I disabled bind9. These are the files on the server that is not working. I have included hosts, hostname, interfaces, dhcpd.conf, ifconfig -a and resolv.conf. I am really puzzled about this. The help is greatly appreciated. This seems to be the relevant file, ie this sets what the server itself uses for DNS, nico...@edubuntus2:~$ cat /etc/resolv.conf nameserver 66.255.85.8 nameserver 66.255.85.9 Can the server contact these dns servers? You can test the dns servers with something like: dig www.edubuntu.org @66.255.85.8 dig www.edubuntu.org @66.255.85.9 A DNS issue might explain your delays with sudo. I don't imagine it explains much more than that though. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Server Suddenly Started Hunging up
On Tue, 03 Mar 2009, Nicolas Roussi wrote: No I am not. Also, on every sudo command it takes forever. Is your DNS working okay? Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: your mail
On Sun, 25 Jan 2009, Sergio Dicandia wrote: OK, now I installed DNSMasq and disabled dhcp3 on the server. I edited the .conf file to reflect my needs in terms of IP range and the like; service seems to be up, I can monitor the requests with tcpdump (I'll post the previous results asap), but thin clients don't boot. Is there anything I should add/edit in dnsmasq.conf to have the clients boot from the server ? dhcpd had a couple of lines about pxe, but I'm not sure how to manage this with dnsmasq. As I mentioned, I don't know the exact details of how you configure it. These posts give examples of it http://lists.thekelleys.org.uk/pipermail/dnsmasq-discuss/2007q3/thread.html#1620 You need to get across the boot file, the root-path and the server. dhcp-boot=net:pxe,/ltsp/i386/pxelinux.0,servername, 192.168.0.254 dhcp-option=17,192.168.0.254:/opt/ltsp/i386/ I really haven't used it though so I can't be sure. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: DHCP server sometimes not found
Hi, On Wed, 21 Jan 2009, Sergio Dicandia wrote: No luck with DHCP ... it still doesn't give more than 4 (or 5 at best) addresses and then it freezes I did the tcpdump as suggested, you can find it attached ... I think you need to include it in plain text. That attachment seems not to have made it through the mailing list server. Now I'm thinking to replace the DHCP server, but I need something on the server itself, or on a device (the router, maybe) since I cannot ask the teacher to: 1- start a service machine (acting as a DHCP server) 2 - wait until it's uprunning 3 - start the server 4 - start the TCs Since you reported the issue, so did Lars Andersson on ltsp-users. He found that by placing the DHCP server on a different machine the issue went away. I'd guess there's an issue with the standard dhcp server on ubuntu. http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=A1777BE3AA0AB44ABADA6FF66BA594ED6C358F0F61%40vkex.vindeln.seforum_name=ltsp-discuss If you want to get this going, I'd suggest a dhcp server on another machine (it worked for Lars). If you have time to try it, it would be great if you could try to put a different dhcp server (udhcpd or dnsmasq) on the thin client server. Way too tricky for people used to switch on a general button and have all the PCs running (OK, WindowsME, but) What about a router ? I also need to assign fixed IPs to specific MAC adddresses to be able to use iTalc ... :-( I'm very sad about this You're not alone. But I think we're on the right track now. I know it's slow, but we'll get it fixed. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Thin Client /etc/hosts entry
Hi, On Wed, 14 Jan 2009, M Rathburn wrote: This works perfectly Gavin! Thanks! Great. As Mickey suggests though, functioning DNS is really the way to do this. What I've described is a hack, which can be useful in various instances where you need to customise the image _post_ boot-up. We had a network testbed where each machine needed extra network interfaces, a bunch of static routes, hosts entries, firewall rules, etc. It did that fairly effectively. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: which release to use?
Hi, On Thu, 15 Jan 2009, David Van Assche wrote: Not really. For some reason moving from Gutsy to Hardy stopped fat clients from working. In Intrepid Ibex, things are working fine again. There are so many components that could be at fault, but I suspect udev and/or the rc sequence. I tried hard to get it to work, but eventually gave up on it. Did we discuss this before? Is there a bug reported? I've never really had time to work on fat clients but I'm curious to know what's going wrong. Can you not even login? Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Firefox as local app and networking [SOLVED]
Hi, On Mon, 12 Jan 2009, M Rathburn wrote: Howdy. Still getting the same result here after following the updated directions. Reboot and can't see the internet. If I punch in the line: sudo iptables --table nat --append POSTROUTING --jump MASQUERADE --source 192.168.0.0/24 then it comes to life. Are there any other files you need to see the contents of? Gah! Another typo. I need to be more careful. Many thanks for going through the testing. The idea is that iptables-save writes to a file /etc/ltsp/nat and that when the network comes up, the command in /etc/network/interfaces is run. iptables-restore /etc/ltsp/nat The filenames didn't match. I've updated the wiki page again. You hopefully just need to modify /etc/network/interfaces to take account of this. Thanks again, Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Firefox as local app and networking
Hi, On Sun, 11 Jan 2009, M Rathburn wrote: Edubuntu 8.10 amd64 I want to try to run Firefox as a local app on thin clients to see if things can be sped up (right clicks, listboxes, etc.). I have everything set up, unfortunately the thin client running Firefox locally cannot see the internet. Here's my config: eth0 - on my local network where our internet is (192.168.1.25, gw 192.168.1.1). eth1 - is the thin client network with scheme 192.168.0.254 (server). The simplest way is probably to run a proxy server like squid on the ltsp server, but that will only solve http and ftp. You might want realplayer or something later, so NAT is probably the best approach and also will use less resources on the server: https://wiki.edubuntu.org/ThinClientHowtoNAT Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Firefox as local app and networking [SOLVED]
Hi, On Mon, 12 Jan 2009, M Rathburn wrote: The solution was to set on the LTSP server the option domain-name-servers in /etc/ltsp/dhcpd.conf to that of my internet router. Then, a static route was needed in the internet router for 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.1.25 for the traffic to get back. So yes, it was a combination of the suggestions presented. Thanks guys! Here's the updated dhcpd.conf file: It's clear to me that the howto, while useful, is not sufficiently clear or correct. I've redrafted it. Could people please have a look and see what they think? If people think it's wrong, bad or worse we can always fix it up or roll the changes back. https://wiki.edubuntu.org/ThinClientHowtoNAT Gavin PS I left out the step of setting routes on the upstream router. The whole point of using NAT is that this is not needed. The upstream router sees the ltsp server's address, so routing is not an issue. This is simpler, as we can direct people how to NAT, whereas every router is different. -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Firefox as local app and networking [SOLVED]
Hi, On Mon, 12 Jan 2009, M Rathburn wrote: I backed out the old stuff, removed the static entry from my router, then followed the new HowTo and it works perfectly! Excellent. A practical test is a very good proofing. I'd like to have a howto which we can just point users at and expect that they really will be likely to get it working first off. My only suggestion would be that perhaps #5 could be rolled into #1. Touch the dhcpd.conf file once and be done with it. That would be quicker alright, but I'm hoping that by explaining the meaning of the steps first in a logical order that the beginner may learn and understand what they're doing -- even if it's not exactly the quickest route. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Firefox as local app and networking [SOLVED]
Hi, On Mon, 12 Jan 2009, M Rathburn wrote: I found a slight hiccup. I rebooted the server, and noticed that it's stopped working. I went and looked at the /etc/network/if-up.d/ltsp-nat file and can see the entry for '-A POSTROUTING -s 192.168.0.0/24 -j MASQUERADE'. I had to do the command 'sudo iptables --table nat --append POSTROUTING --jump MASQUERADE --source 192.168.0.0/24' to get it to work again. I've done this twice now to make sure I wasn't missing something. You're absolutely right. I had thought that iptables-save created a shell script. It creates input for iptables-restore. I've updated the howto. Thanks for the great feedback. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
issue where openoffice crashes thin clients
Hi, some time back we has people with issues where thin clients were being crashed by openoffice (and firefox). The issue came down to the application pushing large amounts of pixmap (image) data onto the X server. Pixmaps are large uncompressed images and in thin clients, the X server runs on the thin client which ends up running out of memory. Bugs were reported against both firefox and openoffice. Both have seen work to address them. Jordan Erickson in particular has been very helpful in this. Caolan MacNamara who works for Redhat has already patched one relevant issue. Some questions have been posted back on the openoffice issue: http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=85321 Does disabling hardware acceleration in the Tools-Options-View tabpage change the behaviour? Other than that, I concur with hdu, please file me a new issue for the slideshow problem. Could anyone who sees this issue please shout. If possible, it would be great to have a test presentation document which would show this issue. Also, if you could try the change above and see does this workaround the issue, that might better help them understand the problem. Thanks, Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: DHCP server sometimes not found
Hi, On Wed, 17 Dec 2008, Sergio Dicandia wrote: Has anybody tried this with Intrepid ? Maybe they fixed it in the new release ... Several of the LTSP developers read this list so if they know of this problem and a fix to this, you may be sure they'll say. In the meantime, we need to document this better for them. Can you please do the tcpdump on the server so we can make sure of what's going on (give us the tcpdump trace along with what roughly moments you booted what machines/mac addresses). It sounds like this _might_ be a nasty bug which several people have seen and if so, we need to know exactly what happens. If there's a serious issue we need to reproduce it and pin it down so the developers can fix it. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Suggestions for preventing ultra-hi monitor resolution
Hi, On Tue, 02 Dec 2008, Tom Wolfe wrote: Any suggestions for how to prevent clients from having excessively high resolution, e.g. one of my clients ends up with 1920*1440 which is almost unreadable. I tried: [default] X_MODE_0 =1024x768 in /var/lib/tftpboot/ltsp/i386/lts.conf but for some reason this doesn't work on this client. I also tried sudo ltsp-update-image in case that needed to be done, but still resolution remains 1920x1440 on this client. Are you sure 1024x768 is an available mode? I imagine the above only works if it is. If you know how to login on the thin client console you could take a look in /etc/X11/xorg.conf and see what modes are available. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: School in Swindon considering going Linux!
Hi, On Tue, 02 Dec 2008, norman wrote: I assume this is Swindon UK so why not post this in [EMAIL PROTECTED] That may be useful too, but there's naught wrong with posting here too, if he's proposing to use edubuntu. Not that many ubuntu users would have familiarity with ltsp. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Convincing a school district to migrate from OS X to Ubuntu or Edubuntu
Hi, On Mon, 17 Nov 2008, David McNally wrote: Please let me know what you think. Being realistic for a moment, I think you need to consider what the huge changes you propose that all your technicians and users would have to make, what the real benefit would be to those users and what problems it might cause. In other words a realistic cost:benefit analysis. You dislike Microsoft Office. One person's preference is a dubious reason for an entire network to change, but the targetted solution would be to propose replacing Microsoft Office with something like OpenOffice v3 (for OS X). You're apparently worried about virus issues. There are few, if any, virus problems at all on OS X to date so moving to linux is unlikely to help here. My advice is only to suggest replacing an operating system (a massively expensive task across a network) where you can document real, compelling benefits which that change will bring and where those benefits outweigh the potential downsides. Otherwise, you probably won't convince them of anything and if you do, you may be in for a horrible shock when your wish comes true. There are often compelling reasons (license costs, hardware costs, maintainability, flexibility, ...), but you haven't listed any that I can see as yet. I use linux and help support it in a school, but one should not recommend changing a school's working system without a substantial amount of careful thought and certainty that it will work out well. If it doesn't, you'll be responsible. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: [ILUG] Edubuntu in Primary school. Help needed.
Hi, On Mon, 10 Nov 2008, Paul Harrison wrote: We have 30 thin clients, a mix of Pentium 3s with 128MB ram and Pentium 4s with 512MB ram. Our server is a Dell precision with two Pentium Xeon 1.7GHz processors and 2GB ram. We have installed Ubuntu 8 Hardy Heron and the Edubuntu add-on package. For 30 thin clients working concurrently, I'd suggest you probably need more RAM in the server. I'd look to upgrade to 4GB. In the grand scheme of things, it's not that expensive to do (at least if you don't buy from Dell). The thin clients are connecting and running but we are having some problems. We would greatly appreciate some help/advice with our project. No problem. We can be contacted at the school 01-8259933, 9am to 2.30pm - Ask for Breandan or 086-1551109 for myself, Paul Harrison. Without meaning to sound awkward, the best way to move forward is for you to describe your problem(s) in an email on this list, either one at a time or together but clearly separated within the email. Be as descriptive as possible. This means more people will be involved in the conversation, more people will learn from it and more people will contribute to it. Also, you may want to post these questions to the edubuntu-users mailing list. Everyone on that list is using edubuntu and it included the developers of edubuntu so if there's a standard edubuntu problem we might not be aware of it, but they would. https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Firehol and edubuntu.
Hi, On Fri, 17 Oct 2008, Ken Campbell wrote: I have set up an ubuntu server to act as proxy server (tinyproxy) and content filter(DansGuardian) for one of my elementary schools. The configuration off of the LTSP site utilizes firehol and works great for edubuntu thin clients on the lan (proxy works, DG content filter works, etc) However, this server is not an ltsp server. It is used in a school environment for proxy service and content filtering only. I am asking for help in allowing all clients on the LAN to point to the proxy port and thus have content filtered by DG. Firehol as configured for LTSP situation does not give LAN clients access to the proxy box. This is my initial exposure to firehol and hope someone has been there done that. Proxies commonly run on tcp port 8080 or 3128. If you figure out what port it is, you'll need to allow connections from the local network to that port on the proxy server. You then need to allow the firewall itself to connect out over tcp port 80, 443 and possible 8000 so it can get the webpages. After that, you need to configure the web browsers to look at the proxy on hostname and port. A couple of more manageable ways to do this are: 1. Set up a dns name wpad.your.network and create a file wpad.dat at http://wpad.your.network/wpad.dat then you can set browsers to autodetect settings. 2. Create a proxy.pac file on a web server somewhere on the network and point your browsers at that. 3. Set up transparent proxying, so no configuration on the browser is necessary at all. Any of the above will allow you to change the proxy settings in the future without reconfiguring every browser on the network (which you really don't want). Configure one browser by hand to verify it works, but then I'd suggest doing one of the above to deploy it across the network. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: PXE-E32: TFTP Open Timeout Error
On Wed, 15 Oct 2008, Ken Schreihofer wrote: I've tried several approaches, and have not as of yet been able to solve the boot. Would someone be able to shed some light on this problem for me? It sounds like dhcp server didn't start on boot (so you started it) and that openbsd-inetd didn't start (you may need to start it). /etc/init.d/openbsd-inetd start You should look in /etc/rc2.d/ to see are there SXXX links present to start those on reboot. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: auto login
Hi, On Mon, 13 Oct 2008, Uwe Geercken wrote: danke fuer die schnelle antwort. Jede person auf die edubuntu-users list spricht Englisch. Nur wenige sprechen Deutsch. Auf Englisch bitte, Gavin :-) -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: how to use ipod suffle with ubuntu 7.04
Hi, On Sun, 12 Oct 2008, Denny Adisetyawan wrote: I have a friend have ipod suffle... but he cannot upload some music to his ipod suffle because my computer running Ubuntu 7.04. I want to help him but I can't Can anyone help me about this? A quick google search for ubuntu ipod shuffle reveals lots of articles. http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9266 http://www.ubuntux.org/how-to-use-an-ipod-with-ubuntu http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/ubuntu-help/80336-2nd-generation-ipod-shuffle.html If your desktop is running Ubuntu 7.04 you should probably upgrade it. 7.04 is at end of life this month. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: fat client
Hi, this is interesting stuff. On Fri, 10 Oct 2008, David Van Assche wrote: I suppose I can put up a Hardy version on my website. Probably no harm. I suspect a lot of people will want to stick with hardy (I suspect intrepid suggests a lot of new stuff that might not be entirely stable yet). Fat client is indeed meant for what you mention. The minimum requirements as I see them are a 600 mhz P2 with 256MB Ram. It will run on systems with less, but it will be slower, anything below this is really better geared towards use as a thin client. I've tested the low fat client on a 500mhz geode with 128mb ram, and even that works... but it requires some more testing to see what it will and will not run on. Obviously choosing high fat or low fat will make a difference... Does it use NBD or a local disk swap partition? While it might boot and even login in 128MB RAM, I suspect you'll run very short of ram very quickly with all applications running locally. Your ram requirements should I guess be similar to those for a regular desktop. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequirements Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Adobe Acrobat Reader Super Slow
Hi, On Wed, 08 Oct 2008, Dean Mumby wrote: Gavin McCullagh wrote: Out of curiosity is there a reason you aren't using Evince, the standard gnome document viewer? It doesn't do a very good job of printing pdfs( font issues and funny lines and dots) even hough it is much faster for reading them That's disappointing. It might be more productive (or at least as productive) to try and track that issue down at the same time. Do you have an example problem document you could give us? Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: system crawling....
Hi, On Wed, 01 Oct 2008, Luis Montes wrote: I wasn't able to authenticate on a text terminal either, so I couldn't run top to see what was going on. The disks weren't really spinning much either. Then about ten minutes later something freed up, and I'm in now. No idea what it was, but with 8 x 2GHz cores and 16 gigs of ram, you'd think it would be able to get through standard ubuntu init stuff without issues. Agreed. Can you look back through /var/log/syslog and /var/log/messages during the time and see if there's anything that might indicate the source of the issue? One possibility might be a rogue process hogging all system RAM which eventually might have been killed by the kernel (that kill would be logged). There are many more possibilities though. Related to my first problem though, why are the thin clients dependent on the server being able to launch gdm itself? X on the server shouldn't even be necessary. As far as I know, in LTSP5 gdm is not needed. It was in LTSP4 because gdm was what the clients connected to. However, as the client runs its own display manager and starts a session over ssh, I don't think gdm running is necessary. Presumably you've observed something that makes you think it is? Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: system crawling....
On Thu, 02 Oct 2008, Mickey Moore wrote: Is it possible that the primary DNS server is not responding and a timeout must occur each lookup before switching to the alternate? This type of external wait delay would not be affected by the speed of the 8x2GHZ system. Sounds very plausible alright. Would DNS delay a local text terminal login though? Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: system crawling....
Hi, On Wed, 01 Oct 2008, Luis Montes wrote: I have a school that's been down now for 2 days. It's an 8.04 edubuntu setup. Single server (8 core, 16 GB ram, 32 bit server kernel). Just using local user accounts and homes. The thing is taking a couple of minutes to authenticate. I just spent a day getting the server passed starting gnome display manager by switching to the frame buffer for X. Is it always the same amount of time or does it seem like you're waiting for a busy system to respond? Now, even on the server itself it takes a very long time authenticate, and even sudo times out. Something must have changed on an update. We can't go another week of having the whole school down. Can you login to the text terminal on the server (press CtrlaltF1) and run the commands uptime and free and send us the output. Is the disk light on the machine flashing a lot? If you run top, are there programs hogging the cpu? Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: DVD playback
Hi, On Mon, 22 Sep 2008, Fabian Rodriguez wrote: Hmmm... no need to add third-party unsupported repositories for DVD playback in Hardy 8.04.1 LTS. Please see: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/PlayingDVDs Ah, thanks for the correction! Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: 7.10 Gusty - Client Login not loading
Hi, On Mon, 22 Sep 2008, Mike White wrote: This gets me into a client login screen. Now I am unable to authenticate. I have already attempted sudo update-ltsp-sshkeys and sudo update-ltsp-image I presume you mean: sudo ltsp-update-image sudo ltsp-update-sshkeys (if not you might want to try these). There are some instructions for debugging thin client logins here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebugThinClientLogin Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: DVD playback
Hi, On Sun, 21 Sep 2008, Vincent Yau wrote: When I tried to play DVD, the screens are all scrambled. These are legitimate DVDs I bought in stores. When I play the same DVD on my macbook, it works fine. Most movies sold on DVD are encrypted using a scheme called CSS. These is a library for Linux, sometimes called DeCSS, libcss or libdvdcss2. This package allows Linux video programs to decrypt the DVD and play it. If you don't already have this, you're going to need it. As there are questions about the legality of libdvdcss2, ubuntu cannot redistribute it. It's not too tough to install though. Load this link and go to the section headed Install libdvdcss2 and w32 video codecs in Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) and all should become a little clearer. http://www.ubuntugeek.com/install-mplayer-and-multimedia-codecs-libdvdcss2w32codecsw64codecs-in-ubuntu-804-hardy-heron.html Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Is it just me, or is LTSP a mess?
Hi, On Wed, 10 Sep 2008, Todd O'Bryan wrote: Because when students log back in after a freeze, their desktop appears without the top and bottom panels and they can't do anything until I slay them. Could you give us the output of ps aux |grep username for that username before you slay them? If we need to repair watchdog, that can possibly be done. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Installing LTSP from CD
Hi, On Mon, 08 Sep 2008, David Ally wrote: Please let's make this information complete, on the link below, it started with installing fresh from CD, but did not say anything about installing LTSP on a system that already has Ubuntu on it from CD. The command given normally download from other sources and not from CD. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuLTSP/LTSPQuickInstall So, what do we have to do to install LTSP on a system that has Ubuntu already installed from CD-ROM drive? I don't recommend putting this in the wiki, but I think this is the answer you want. If you installed using the edubuntu cdrom, that cd should already be configured as a source for apt. If you pop the cd in and do apt-get install edubuntu-desktop (or select it and install with the package manager) it should take the packages from the cdrom. If you didn't install from the edubuntu cdrom (which is likely), you can get one, pop it in the drive and do apt-cdrom add or click System-Administration-Software Sources, click the 3rd Party Software tab and click add cdrom. Then you should be able to install it as above. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Installing LTSP from CD
On Mon, 08 Sep 2008, Eric Morey wrote: On Mon, 2008-09-08 at 10:34 +0100, Gavin McCullagh wrote: I don't recommend putting this in the wiki, but I think this is the answer you want. Why not? I should've said without rewriting so it's clearer. I just dashed it off, I don't think it's of sufficient quality to put on the wiki. Plus, it needs someone to test and make sure it's true. Other than that, feel free to put it in the wiki :-) Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Installing LTSP from CD
On Mon, 08 Sep 2008, Oliver Grawert wrote: edubuntu-desktop doesnt depend on ltsp ... to install ltsp from CDrom use the --mirror option to ltsp-build-client with the file:// protocol :) Of course not, sorry. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: How to dual boot to ltsp and windows xp
On Thu, 04 Sep 2008, Krsnendu dasa wrote: How can I set up some of my machines so there is an option of booting to Windows XP or ltsp. I have heard someone else has done it on this list. Can you give me some tips. When you pxe boot, syslinux starts up before the kernel loads. It can have a menu with a timeout and you can choose to boot the local hard drive. Page 12 of this presentation shows and example to pick between two kernels but you can also have network boot or local boot, etc. Syslinux configures centrally and you can configure by ranges of mac addresses. http://www.greenfly.org/talks/pxe/pxe-magic.html This is the doc I used to get this working: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuLTSP/LTSPMultiboot Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Urgent help request! was Re: how do you get something to run when a user logs on?
Hi, On Sun, 31 Aug 2008, john wrote: When I tried calling these scripts from /etc/X11/Xsession.d per Ollies suggestion the scripts didn't seem to run, and in fact after accepting my credentials X just sent me back to the login screen, perhaps my syntax was incorrect. But I couldn't find any debug information in the logs to trouble shoot the issue. Where do I find more debug info? I think you need to remove the exit 0; off the end as a start. I'll reply with more detail in a bit. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: how do you kill a user's old processes when they try to log back on
On Fri, 29 Aug 2008, Todd O'Bryan wrote: As a follow-on to this question, is the XRAMPERC variable that was available in Gutsy still available in Hardy? I added a setting to /var/lib/tftpboot/ltsp/i386/lts.conf, but users could still crash their terminals by going to a particularly graphics heavy website in Firefox. I'm not sure about XRAMPERC to be honest, but it's disappointing to hear firefox crashed a client as, if that's firefox v3, it should have the new code in it to reduce the stress it puts on the X server (which caused it to crash). Are you using firefox v3, yeah? Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Urgent help request! was Re: how do you get something to run when a user logs on?
Hi, as promised, a little more detail (I was a little busy earlier, sorry). On Sun, 31 Aug 2008, john wrote: This issue is I want to run some scripts that up until now have been called by /etc/profile. This has worked for me up through Edubuntu 7.04 The scripts use the system variables $HOME and $USER to map NFS shares to users desktops. I understand from oli and others that the image generated by 8.04 doesn't reference /etc/profile when users log in. When I tried calling these scripts from /etc/X11/Xsession.d per Ollies suggestion the scripts didn't seem to run, and in fact after accepting my credentials X just sent me back to the login screen, perhaps my syntax was incorrect. But I couldn't find any debug information in the logs to trouble shoot the issue. Where do I find more debug info? Actually, what Ollie is doing is sending you down a path which is more consistent with regular (not thin client) desktops. This is probably for the best in general. As far as I know, /etc/profile only gets run when a shell such as bash gets started. Environment variables are then inherited by processes spawned by that shell. In the old LTSP case, the first thing which happens is the thin client connects via ssh to the server, which spawns a shell (bash) which in turn spawns gnome, etc. As a result, /etc/profile worked for setting things within thin clients. However, it probably didn't work for old LTSP and it wouldn't work on installed desktops which use GDM (the display manager) as those spawn gnome directly without starting a bash shell. The process is that /etc/X11/Xsession gets run and it in turn includes these lines: # use run-parts to source every file in the session directory; we source # instead of executing so that the variables and functions defined above # are available to the scripts, and so that they can pass variables to each # other SESSIONFILES=$(run-parts --list $SYSSESSIONDIR) if [ -n $SESSIONFILES ]; then set +e for SESSIONFILE in $SESSIONFILES; do . $SESSIONFILE done set -e fi which says something like for each file in /etc/X11/Xsession.d/, execute that code within this script. Because your script had an exit in it, that effectively put an early exit inside the script above which is why your script broke your login. francois suggestion about putting the lines in /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/profile and then updating the image didn't work either. I'm pretty sure this is incorrect. The Xsession runs on the server so the XSession scripts that get run are those of the server. As regards debugging, I suggest writing the output of commands and stuff into a file such as /tmp/xsession-$USER.txt. That way you can get an idea how things went and put in debug statements to see the value of certain variables at the time the script ran. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Childsplay hangs on exit
On Tue, 26 Aug 2008, Gavin McCullagh wrote: On Tue, 26 Aug 2008, Krsnendu dasa wrote: My server is 32 bit. I'll see if I can turn off the sound and see if that helps. if it does work, then try: sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2debian-all and see does that sort it out libsdl1.2debian-alsa. Then I meant to say: sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2debian-all which will remove libsdl1.2debian-alsa. Then try childsplay again with sound on and see does that sort it out. Let us know how you get on. Thanks, Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: fat clients ssh into ltsp server
On Sun, 24 Aug 2008, Patrick McKnight wrote: I am setting up an ltsp server but somehow I have run into a novel problem. I have several machines that are stand-alone workstations that boot off their own hard drives. I want to be able to access the hardware on those systems as well as allow those workstations to access the ltsp server. When you say access the ltsp server, what exactly do you mean. Surely any desktop can ssh to the ltsp server? I am using the ltsp server as the dhcp server for my network. So, can the ltsp server be a dhcp server for thin and fat clients and allow access via ssh across the network? If so, how? Thanks greatly for any help. It does this by default. The thin clients will PXE boot, other desktops will not request booting information and will just get IP addresses as normal. When you say access do you mean a full X display running on the server or just be able to ssh into it. You should already be able to ssh to it. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Childsplay hangs on exit
Hi, On Mon, 25 Aug 2008, Olle Englund wrote: Yes, having the same problem. The screen freezes after pressing j (y) to exit. The only solution is to press ctrl+alt+del or switch to console to terminate the process. The server is x64 - was yours, Krsnendu dasa? I think this is the same issue being described in the current thread Apps hanging around. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/edubuntu-users/2008-August/thread.html#4345 If you disable sound on a thin client, you'll probably find the issue goes away. That's not a fix of course, but it should tell us whether you have the same issue or if yours is different. We're going to have to get some programming muscle to sort this out. It looks like an issue with libsdl and esound/pulseaudio to my somewhat untrained eye. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Apps hanging around.
Hi, On Sat, 23 Aug 2008, Luis Montes wrote: It looks like watchdog or xterminator will help for the cases when apps are still there on after logging out. But right now I can't even close some windows while still logged in. On a fully patched 8.04, if I can't even seem to close SDL apps like tuxpaint or gcompris. There is nothing being logged that I can see. I recall an issue like this being reported before. One workaround was to disable sound. It seemed like the problem related somehow to releasing pulseaudio. Could you try starting it from the command line and see does the problem repeat? Then, set export ESPEAKER= export PULSE_SERVER= and see does the issue go away. If it doesn't, maybe disable sound on a thin client (in lts.conf) and try again. Obviously you want sound, but this will hopefully help track down cause of the issue. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Apps hanging around.
Hi, On Sun, 24 Aug 2008, Luis Montes wrote: Looks like I can close the apps when clearing those env variables. This worked for both wesnoth and tuxpaint. Okay. We should probably get a bug reported in launchpad. As I recall, last time this was brought up, we concluded that it was against apps which used libsdl (tuxpaint, tuxmath, gcompris,...). I'm not certain what package to file against in ubuntu. You could file against tuxpaint or gcompris and see what the package maintainer makes of it. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/edubuntu-users/2007-December/thread.html#3025 Any chance going against an external ldap server for authentication/authorization has anything to do with this? (just in case sound requires certain groups) Not that I'm aware. However, if you find this is an issue, please let us know. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Edubuntu Remote Desktop Issue
Hi, On Sat, 23 Aug 2008, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Last weekend, I had to move the physical VMware server to its original location, and everything was shutdown gracefully, including all VM's. When I powered back up, I could no longer connect the the Edubuntu workstations, and I cannot find any way to get them to work now. According to the RealVNC website, the error I am receiving is related to the VNC server wanting to secure the session. The free version of VNC viewer does not encrypt the session, and for this testing, encryption is not required. Since I could not find any firewall or configuration issue preventing access, and having made certain all three Edubuntu workstations did not have the Require Encryption check box enabled, I created a new Edubuntu VM. Here are the results. 1: Installed Ubuntu Workstation 9 2.6.24-19-generic ** Windows based VNC Clients work with this configuration. 2: Installed Edubuntu add-in, no reboot ** Windows based VNC Clients work with this configuration. 3: Rebooted Edubuntu Workstation ** Windows based VNC Clients DO NOT work with this configuration. 4: Fully patched (107 files downloaded) ** Windows based VNC Clients DO NOT work with this configuration. I have even tried the original fix of checking then unchecking the Require Encryption advanced option. You say Windows-based VNC clients don't work. Do Linux-based VNC clients work? It wouldn't be a solution, but it might be useful to help understand the problem. Also, have you tried any other windows-based VNC clients? Have you tried manually starting the vino vnc server from the command line? There's some interesting stuff here on how to control vino a little better: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=266981 You could also (as a workaround), try installing vnc4server and starting it from the command line. That might help get you going. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Hi guys, I have problem with Firefox
Hi, On Fri, 22 Aug 2008, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Vu Nguyen schrieb: I have problem with Firefox when I logon to Ubuntu LTSP (server) and on the think client with the same user name. What looks like a logon at a client is a logon at the server so you are logged on twice at the same system. Moreorless anyway. If you open firefox multiple times on the same DISPLAY, it'll be smart enough to simply open extra windows for you without starting another instance of firefox. If you try to run it on two different displays (eg two thin clients or a thin client and the server console), this cannot be done, a second instance of firefox is needed. It is not safe for firefox to have multiple instances of itself reading a single user's profile (eg, what happens if they both try to bookmark a file at the same moment, there would be a danger of corruption). For this reason, firefox prevents multiple instances of firefox running on a single profile. You can create a second firefox profile to achieve this. Run: firefox -ProfileManager However, the same issues can arise with other programs like gnome. It's generally better not to login the same account in two places at once. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: ltsp5 boot process
On Tue, 19 Aug 2008, Rudy Gevaert wrote: Where can I found ´the code' that shows me how the thin client configures itselves? Most of it the configuration is done by this script: -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2564 2006-10-22 10:56 /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/init.d/ltsp-client More specifically I want to found out how NMBD server is getting set. I want to override it. Do you mean NMBD or NBD? I haven't found a way to specify a different NMBD server other than the TFTP server. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Software Raid
Hi, On Thu, 31 Jul 2008, Uwe Geercken wrote: at the time I setup the system, I have used one harddisk for the system and one for the home directories of the students. so these are on seperate drives. What sizes are the respective drives? Are they IDE, SATA, SCSI? I am now thinking putting in a second drive and use software raid so that I will have faster reads. my first thought was to use raid for the system and still have the home folders on a seperate drive. or maybe I should put home and the system on the same drive and use raid for both? I presume you're talking about MD (linux kernel software raid). Presumably it can read off the disks independently so you should probably get improved read speeds. To my mind though, reliability is the best feature of RAID1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels#RAID_1_performance If you can get both the system and the home directories onto RAID1, you're system will keep running in the event of a single disk failure. Disk failure is remarkably common these days. Migrating the running system to software RAID is not easy, so you may find it easiest to reinstall which is a bit of a downside. Presumably you can just back up and restore the home directories with tar. For the system, if you have sufficient space and don't wish to reinstall, you could possibly do something like 1. Shrink your / partition by 50% using gnu parted 2. Create a new equal sized partition in the resulting space. Make it of type linux-raid 3. Create a larger raid partition on the new disk. 4. Use mdadm to create a raid1 array using the two raid partitions. 5. Format the raid partition ext3 (or whatever you're using) 6. Reboot and make sure the raid partition comes back up. 7. Drop to single user mode and use something like cpio or rsync to sync the new raid partition with the old one. 8. Configure grub with extra boot items to boot onto the new partition 9. Reboot using the new grub entry and say a prayer (if it doesn't work, you should be able to boot onto the old partition anyway). 10.Once you're up on the new partition, you can re-run grub-install, delete the old non-raid partition, expand the existing one back into the freed space, expand the raid array into the space and finally expand the root filesystem on the bigger partition. These instructions are untested and I've probably missed something. Frankly, I'd highly recommend the reinstall, backing up your config first of course! Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Desktop Install - Central Login ??
Hi, On Thu, 31 Jul 2008, Mon Sagullo wrote: I just recently plunged into 40 very fat clients for our new lab in school:-) Kindly correct me if I am wrong, but can I make a list of users - students with their respective log-in names and password - on one desktop, then copy this configuration file (I don't exactly know how to refer to this), and then copy this on all the desktops so all the students can use any of the computers with the same username and password - without me doing this manually on all the units? You can do it, but you should _strongly_ consider learning NIS instead. It's relatively quick to set up and it means new accounts automatically propogate across all machines the moment you create them on the server. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SettingUpNISHowTo From my corner of the globe, I still could not find a real supplier for thin and net appliance. And with what I have read from this listgroup about the issues on smoothing out the friendship between thin clients and an Ubuntu server, I chose what I believe is the more manageable approach, considering my situation as described in the above paragraph: We've never used specific thin client hardware, we just use old computers. That generally works great for us. Experience will vary depending on your position on the globe, but with a decent server, that scales very well for us. Any script to minimize this tedious routine would be much appreciated. NIS (or better yet LDAP) is the real answer to this problem. A little reading and experimenting will make your life so much easier. I am glad to have stumbled on how to do a timed-shutdown :-) sudo at 23:00enter shutdown -h nowenter press ctrl-d at is a very useful command. So far, the repeatable success rate is far from okay when I try setting the wireless NICs to roaming, then type in the password after the prompt; enabled MAC filtering thrown in. I noticed that the repeat success seems to slide down when I have more than one wireless AP/Router within range. ?? Your desktops are on wireless? If they're fixed to their locations, don't use roaming mode. Instead, use manual configuration, set the essid, etc. That will work more reliably. You can usually set the BIOS to turn the machine on at a particular time (eg 9am) and you can add a line to /etc/crontab like this: 00 23 * * * rootshutdown -r now which will shutdown every night at 23:00. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
clients boot to busybox ... was Re: edubuntu-users Digest, Vol 26, Issue 18
Hi, On Sat, 26 Jul 2008, David Ally wrote: The DHCP problem is resolved, but i'm having BusyBox prompt on the thin clients instead of loading the splash and gdm. Please help me. You might want to try rebuilding the client setup. sudo ltsp-build-client sudo ltsp-update-image Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
(fwd) sis7019 on thin client embedded
- Forwarded message from brooke merkin [EMAIL PROTECTED] - From: brooke merkin [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: sis7019 on thin client embedded To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:58:34 -0400 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary==_Part_107441_19133618.1216922314274 can you help me get the sound going on this thing? I'm just a nice girl who is Way over her head. Thx, Brooke - End forwarded message - -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: root password for sabayon
Hi, On Tue, 22 Jul 2008, Barb A. Tabor wrote: I installed sabayon and it didn't ask me to set up a root password, but now is asking for one. Is there a default root password? What exactly is asking (ie what are you doing when you get asked)? Ubuntu doesn't have a root password by default. You can set one, but it's not something you would ordinarily want to do. Are you sure your own passord won't do? Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
(fwd) root password for sabayon
- Forwarded message from Barb A. Tabor [EMAIL PROTECTED] - From: Barb A. Tabor [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: root password for sabayon To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:45:27 -0400 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary==_alternative 004B9C9E8525748F_= Gavin: I have an Edubuntu (Hardy Heron) server and I use Sabayon to create the images the thin clients will see. We are trying to get our thin clients to authenicate to active directory on our Windows Network. So, we purchased Likewise Enterprise. The salesman told me that it would work for this. The Likewise people told me I have to install Likewise in the image that each thin client receives. So, I was trying to insall Likewise on the Sabayon image. When Likewise starts to execute, I get an error message that says I have to install as superuser. I am not installing from the Terminal, but through the Sabayon interface so I am unable to use sudo. I have logged in as sabayon-admin and made it a root member, but still get the error message. I am so confused as to how to run it as root within Sabayon. Is there another way to do this without using sabayon? Thanks. Barb - End forwarded message - -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Desktop Install - Central Login ??
Hi, On Mon, 21 Jul 2008, David Stalane wrote: I want the kids to be able to log in from any machine in the lab I want the teachers to be able to log in from any machine in the school Thin clients would be a very quick way to do this, but installed desktops have their advantages too. Do I have to use server/thin client or can i do this with the desktop install? i.e. having authentication and user space on just one box but run all the applications locally. You can store /home/ on a server with NFS, then mount that directory as /home on each desktop. This will mean that user's files and settings are available from any computer. You can use any of a number of centralised authentication schemes (LDAP, NIS, AD) to allow consistent logins on any computer. I've never needed to make rules about which computers certain groups can login to, but I'm guessing that should be pretty doable. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Desktop Install - Central Login ??
Hi, On Mon, 21 Jul 2008, David Stalane wrote: The reason I think I'll do full desktop installs is that all the PC's are identical and the spec is not good enough for a server and too good for thin client (they had bought the gear already)...I don't want to cannibalize the existing machines or spend anymore money. That makes reasonable sense. The only trouble with desktop installs is the maintenance is a lot greater. You need to maintain the install on each desktop individually. Some of this can be automated, but thin clients really are one machine. I'm not sure of the status at this point of the diskless fat client (or whatever it's called). The idea is that your desktops network boot, and take their applications, etc. from the server as with thin clients, but they actually run applications locally on the desktop, rather than running them on the server. In principal, this should give you a single install to maintain, but use the computing power of the desktops. I'm not honestly sure if this works well at this point though. I've never done it myself. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: DHCP on 2nic system problem
On Sat, 19 Jul 2008, David Ally wrote: I know some earlier adopters will have noticed this problem, I install Edubuntu classroom server on a system that has 2 nic cards with LTSP activated, but it is just not giving out IP addresses to the clients. I have followes some links on ubuntu forum etc but now solution yet. Please give me a lead on what is happening, i know it is a problem from my end, because Edubuntu works! can you reply with some extra information: 1. run ps aux |grep dhcpd and see if the dhcp server is running and on what interface, eg. [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~ ps aux |grep dhcpd gavin19810 0.0 0.1 3004 764 pts/6S+ 14:13 0:00 grep dhcpd dhcpd31979 0.0 0.0 2872 308 ?Ss Jul10 0:02 /usr/sbin/dhcpd3 -q -pf /var/run/dhcp3-server/dhcpd.pid -cf /etc/ltsp/dhcpd.conf eth0 2. Run /sbin/ifconfig to check what ip addresses are on what interfaces. 3. The file /etc/ltsp/dhcpd.conf If you give us the output of these three, we'll get some idea what your problem is. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: application prefered
Hi, On Thu, 17 Jul 2008, mario salcedo wrote: Hi, anybody know how I can change the text editor prefered. I prefer to use vim but when I use visudo, this open vi. Make sure vim is actually installed and put: export EDITOR=vim into .bashrc in your home directory. Next time you run bash, it should be there for you. If you want to try it in your current shell, just run the above command in that shell. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Edubuntu Install Issue
Hi, On Tue, 15 Jul 2008, Matt Georgetti wrote: when I go to install it on a PC it tells me that the software I am using is for X86 machines and that I am running a machine with an i1586 processor. Both of the machines that I have tried (A Dell GX240 and AcerPower F2) have P4 processors. To my understanding, these should be considered an X86 architecture. Any help with this issue would be greatly appreciated. You're right in saying that a P4/i586 is certainly an X86 machine. Are you sure you didn't download the x86_64 CD image? That's the 64-bit version of edubuntu. It might then complain about the cd being for X86_64 machines. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Firefox pixmap cache to X11 bug reported to bugzilla
Hi, On Thu, 06 Sep 2007, Jim Kronebusch wrote: I was notified that reporting this bug to launchpad was most likely not an appropriate place since a fix would need to come from farther upstream than Ubuntu. So I posted the following bug to bugzilla which is the standard bug reporting facility used by Mozilla: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=395260 In case anyone's interested, there was some interesting news on this bug today. Francis Robichaud has written a patch for firefox which apparently causes it to resize an image to its HTML dictated size if the HTML size is smaller than the image. Of course this resize is done before passing the image to the X server. An example which this patch should fix (assuming it works!), is our traditional crash a thin client page: http://www.carteretcountyschools.org/bse/TeacherWebs/pake/Art%20Show/Art%20Show.htm http://www.carteretcountyschools.org/bms/teacherwebs/sdavenport/artgallery6.htm Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Firefox pixmap cache to X11 bug reported to bugzilla
Hi, On Wed, 09 Jul 2008, Gavin McCullagh wrote: In case anyone's interested, there was some interesting news on this bug today. Francis Robichaud has written a patch for firefox which apparently causes it to resize an image to its HTML dictated size if the HTML size is smaller than the image. Of course this resize is done before passing the image to the X server. His blog has an interesting explanation: http://www.francisrobichaud.com/index.php/2008/07/08/optimizing-mozilla-and-pixmap-management-in-x/ Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: What version of Edubuntu will you run this fall, and why?
Hi, On Wed, 09 Jul 2008, john wrote: I am trying to figure out if I want to iterate this summer. Its taken me nearly a year to get the kinks in 7.04 adjusted to the kinks on our lan and I am really loath to go through that again. Could you give us an idea what sort of customisations you had to make? In our case there's been relatively few. I've been running hardy on my workstation since it came out, but I am not convinced that it offers the kids much more than Fiesty did (besides perhaps an updated firefox and openoffice experience). I was wondering what version of edubuntu or ltsp you'll be presenting kids with this fall and why you chose what you did. We're upgrading feisty-gutsy-hardy today actually. A few reasons off the top of my head: 1. Feisty will not be security patched for the whole year. There have been several very serious security vulnerabilities recently. I wouldn't feel happy without security patching. 2. I don't want to wait until next year to upgrade feisty-gutsy-hardy-intrepid-jumpy (or whatever it's called) as I'm not even sure the gutsy repositories will still be available. I also don't want to reinstall the server. 3. Firefox 3, while still slightly unstable, is really quite a good improvement both in terms of the user and the admin (its ram usage is substantially lower on both the thin client and the server). 4. The latest OpenOffice version will be best at opening the new Microsoft Office formats (actually I think you need an external filter for this so maybe not?) 5. I want support from the ubuntu community at large who will be using hardy. 6. Hardy is LTS which means we need not upgrade again for several years if we don't wish to. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Spare ethernet card prevents thin client from booting
Hi, On Mon, 07 Jul 2008, Dan Moore wrote: I have two ethernet cards in a machine that dual boots into Windows and a Hardy Heron thin client. When I disconnect the cable from ethernet card that is plugged into a PCI slot, and boot LTS from the motherboard's NIC, the machine can't boot. If I remove the PCI ethernet card, everything works. I have seen this occasionally on machines with two ethernet cards. My guess is that you are PXE booting on interface A and then interface B becomes eth0 so the machine tries to contact the server on interface B which is not on that network. I presume the PCI ethernet card is PXE bootable but the motherboard one isn't. Is that why you have two cards in there in the first place? The solution for me was to go into the BIOS and disable the onboard NIC. I'm not certain every BIOS will allow that, but it's likely. Does Windows need two network cards? Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Spare ethernet card prevents thin client from booting
Hi, On Tue, 08 Jul 2008, Greg Reagle wrote: I have experienced an Edubuntu server (version 6.06 I think) with two Ethernet devices that is not consistent about which one it calls eth0 and which one it calls eth1. I can't recall if it was in 6.06, but there was definitely a tweak in (I think udev) on v7.04 which set /etc/iftab as a table of devicenames and mac addresses in order that they would remain consistent. That may have been to address this. The issue was fixed more thoroughly in 7.10 as I understand it. I don't know whether this inconsistency is at the BIOS level or the kernel level. Nor do I. When you're talking about thin clients though, the trouble can be that the behaviour is entirely consistent, but consistently setting the PXE card to eth1, while the ltsp boot scripts presume that eth0 is the active network connection. A single network card is preferable for this reason. You could alternatively plug _both_ network cards into the switch that the server's on. This should mean the PXE will happen on one interface and the remainder of the boot will use the other. If someone can patch LTSP to check through each network interface looking for a link, that might be the best way to sort this out. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
Re: Server Suggestion Request
Hi, On Sun, 29 Jun 2008, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: specifically, i'm thinking about this one... http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=uscs=04kc=6W300l=enoc=bedw42hs=bsdfb=1 which is on sale from dell. i could upgrade from the 1.86 GHz to the 2.13 GHz pretty painlessly if it made sense for my use. I would be more concerned with RAM than the particular CPUs. Multiple CPUs or multiple cores is a help of course, but the upgrade of RAM rather than CPU is more likely to help I suspect. i'm not familiar with raid and they offer a raid option. is that worth it? can an open source software solution work nearly as well? i was thinking that of setting up a nightly back up to the 2nd hd, but i don't really have any experience doing that or setting up and working with raid. i would think the former would be easier to implement. Most RAID is aimed at giving you greater reliability. Hard disks fail all the time and for most important systems it's not okay to have a couple of days downtime while you source a new disk and rebuild. With RAID1 all your data is maintained on two disks so that if one disk should die, the other will continue while you replace the dead one. Choosing between hardware and software raid is not simple I'm afraid. -- Consistency -- The trouble with RAID is what happens when you get a sudden system shutdown (eg due to a power failure) while you're writing to the disk array. Suppose the data is written to one drive correctly, but not yet to the other. When the system resumes, it's very difficult for the system to determine which disk (if either) is correct. So, you end up with some ambiguous blocks where depending on which disk is read, you can get a different answer. An FSCK may not fix or even detect the issue. Most software RAID (ZFS excepted) suffers from the above issue and some cheaper hardware RAID cards do too. The better hardware raid cards include some RAM and a battery. What happens is that the data is first written to the RAM, then the card takes responsibility for writing to the disks. If a power failure occurs, the state is maintained in the RAM (this is why there's a battery) until the system comes up again, at which time the write gets completed. So decent hardware raid cards are better at maintaining the consistency of your disk array. -- CPU load -- Linux software RAID is a simpler approach where linux itself maintains the data on the disks. If it's raid 1, that means doing each write twice and reading from whichever disk is convenient at the time. The duplicate writing does add some load to the system. If you're using RAID5 or some other more complex raid, you incur further CPU load as the processor has to calculate checksums which would otherwise be done by the RAID card. -- Management -- The simplicity of linux software raid has benefits however. You need to be notified if a disk fails so that you can replace it promptly. You then need to be able to sync the array onto the new disk with minimal downtime. Ideally, you'd like to be able to remove the disks, place them in another machine and easily reconstruct the array. The simple software raid approach makes this stuff very straightforward and the fact that it's all done with standard available packages on linux makes all of this stuff easier. With most hardware raid cards you'll need to locate and install a proprietary piece of software to monitor the raid array for you. That can be quite awkward. If the hardware raid card itself fails, you may not be able to recover the data from the disk without replacing that card with an identical one (which isn't always easy to source several years after). If you're very concerned about the consistency, hardware raid is probably the way to go. Otherwise, linux software raid is very thoroughly tested and quite simple to setup, use and maintain. Gavin -- edubuntu-users mailing list edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
