[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote,

> I am also have experiencing that problem on a machine(AST BRAVO 4/66d
> machine with 16mb ram).
> It logs out suddenly. it happens at least 4 to 5 times a day.
> i thought that it could a problem with some hardware.

> I am using  LTSP 3.0 on Red Hat Linux 8.0

> I have posted this few days back, but i didn't got a reply.

> Regards
> Murali


Murali,


I will bet you a carton of beer, that this is a RAM problem.

I have carried out a lot of testing over the last three years with
various solutions for thin clients, including extensive testing on
FreeBSD, two years ago

I have an old 486 DX-33 with 16MB of Ram, which would regularly log out
in the way you describe above.

You have three choices,

(1) add more RAM, a total of 32MB is a good figure to aim for.
(2) Use NFS SWAP, the only option if you do not want to add RAM or do
not have a working hard drive in the computer.
(3) If the thin client computer has a hard drive, use it!!! This is a
much better solution than NFS swap for the reasons below listed below,

(a) Using the local hard drive will not slow down the network, whereas
NFS swap will, particularly if a lot of thin clients are swapping at the
same time.

(b) All this swapping will slow down the the loading of other software
from the server, and I would think, this would also reduce the life of
the drive (drives) in the server.

Do yourself a favor and goto www.toms.net/rb/

Download the latest version of tomsrtbt, this is a minimal Linux system
which you install on a single floppy disk. Once you have downloaded it,
follow the instructions to install this on a floppy. Put the floppy in
the "A" drive on your old computer, boot it, log in as root and password
xxxx then use the "fdisk" program to delete the old partitions on the
disk, then add a new swap partition, you may as well make it use all the
disk.

Let's say you want to make the swap partition, the first primary
partition on drive C:, This is usually the disk, /dev/hda for IDE drives

Type fdisk /dev/hda

Type "m" for help

Type "p" to print the partition table

you will see something like

/dev/hda1  (this is followed by various info)

If you had dos, windows or even Linux on the drive, your first chore is
to remove the old stuff. This is as easy as pressing "d" delete a
partition. In the example above follow the prompts to remove partition
/dev/hda1  

Next, press "n" for new partition, and press "p" for primary partition,
then 1 for partition 1, use the whole disk (if you want), this will
create a new primary partition 1, which you need to change to type ID 82
(linux swap) using the selection "t"

After you have done this you should press "p" for print the partition
table, (you will see something like this below)

Device Boot    Start     End      Blocks      Id     System
/dev/hda1          1      66      53013+      82     Linux swap


If you see something similar to this, type "w" to write the partition
table to disk and exit

type halt

turn off the computer

(Disclaimer, I take no responsibility to loss of data on your hard
drive, the procedure described above WILL ERASE EVERYTHING ON YOUR HARD
DRIVE!)

DO NOT DO THIS ON YOUR SERVER COMPUTER. ONLY DO THIS ON A OLD COMPUTER
WITH A DISK DRIVE THAT HAS DATA THAT YOU WILL NEVER WANT TO ACCESS
AGAIN.

Next we need a hd_swap script, the one below works for me

Use an editor. eg vi, or whatever to create this text file,

#!/bin/sh
modprobe ide-mod
modprobe ide-probe-mod
modprobe ide-disk
modprobe blkdev_swap
swapon /dev/hda1


You will need one of the newer kernels from the LTSP site with the above
modules to run this script.

(perhaps Jim, can elaborate on this)

Note the swapon command at the bottom, this is using /dev/hda1 as the
swap device. MAKE SURE that this is the partition that you have created
on the old computer's hard drive above. I strongly suggest that you
setup all your old computers to use the same /dev/hda1 partition for
swap or you will need to create another script (maybe hd_swap2) with a
modified last line eg. swapon /dev/hda2 (if you have set up hda2 as the
swap partition)

Make sure that Linux can run the file hd_swap by making it executable.
Make sure that you are logged in as root, or type su -   (then enter the
root password)

CD to directory with the above hd_swap file, and enter chmod +x hd_swap

Now copy the file hd_swap to the etc/rc.d directory of your root LTSP
system

eg. cp hd_swap /tftpboot/lts/ltsroot/etc/rc.d

The directory above, will be different for newer version of LTSP,
probably starting with /opt/ltsp or something similar

Make sure that you have copied the file to the correct directory, you
should see another file called "sample" in the same directory.

Last but not least, edit the lts.conf file in the /etc/ directory of
your LTSP root directory

Add the line RCFILE_01 = hd_swap to the workstations that you have used
fdisk to add a swap partition to.

If you already have a RCFILE_01 line, choose the next number,

e.g. RCFILE_02 = hd_swap

Good Luck!

P.s. on my old 486, I have experienced delays, while the computer swaps
out memory to the drive. Tell your users to be patient for a few seconds
as what may appear to be a lockup is NOT!

 
Regards,

John

[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.thin4lin.com









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