Thomas,
All the servers are Dell low-end Power-Edge servers with a Gig of RAM,
40 GB, ATA hard drives and no monitors.
Let me respond to each of your issues:
Authentication:
No, we don't integrate with Windows. The branch office needs can
easily be met with Open Office, A web browser (we use Mozilla) and an
Xterm session to the accounting box.
We've been exploring LDAP, with an eye to integrating the shared
company address book, but that's about it.
All users login with their own username and password to authenticate to
the LTSP box. [As a side note, if you've got any material on LDAP that
you've found helpful, it would be great if you would forward that on to
me!]
Monitoring/Management:
This is a little tricky, but it works. We are using ssh sessions
between the servers to get in and work on the server. Occaisionally,
someone will get locked up in Evolution (mail client-sorry didn't
mention this above!) or Mozilla, and we will have to get in and kill
some of the processes running under their username. About once a month,
I reboot the server just to keep any errant process, etc., from staying
their unanswered too long.
We use IPTables to secure the box and allow incoming access only from
the firewall at our main office.
We keep the application base up-to-date, by using Ximian red-carpet,
which I highly recommend. We actually use the command line portion of
the updater called rug, so we can do the updates transparent of the
users.
We don't run X on the server, and start gdm with an xinetd process in
runlevel three after changing the the [servers] section of the gdm.conf
by commenting out both 0=standard and 1=standard. This works like a
champ, and there is really no need to run X on the server.
Server Software Configuration:
(see above)
Web Problems ala NTLM (MS-Proxy Server)
Again, we don't worry about Windows much. We have a couple of Windows
PC's in our branch offices that are generally natted behind the linux
box, but in general, we don't believe in Windows as an allowable service
on our external network. This policy has served us well over the
years. It's strictly a security policy.
Keep in mind that our branch offices are relatively small. We have
about 5 to 7 thin-clients in each branch office. Currently, these are
old Pentium 100's or 233's. We are considering using an actual
made-for-LTSP thin-client, but have not evaluated any product as of
yet.
Hope this helps.
Thanks,
Steven G. Spencer
On Sat, 2003-11-01 at 04:41, Tom Griffing wrote:
> Steven;
>
> Wow ... I'd be really interested in knowing more about
> your setup, since I'm looking at designing a config to
> handle several remote sites.
>
> In particular, how do you handle the following:
>
> Authentication
> Do you integrate with Windoze? How?
> Do you use LDAP?
>
> Monitoring/Management
> How do you keep track of and administer the servers?
>
> Server Software Configuration
> How do you keep them up to date?
>
> Web problems ala NTLM (MS Proxy server)
> Do you encounter issues with this? If so, how
> do you deal with it?
>
>
> I would also appreciate any info you could share about
> problems encountered/solved with these and what your
> users had to say about the overall environment.
>
> Looking forward to your reply,
>
> Tom
>
>
> > Yes. We have a branch in Denver that uses LTSP. The thing is, no-one
> > at the branch knows anything about it. It is distributed from our Grand
> > Island, NE branch. We actually have 13 branches using LTSP for common
> > access to an accounting system and shared web access.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Steven G. Spencer
--
Steven G. Spencer, Network Manager
Kelly Supply Co./KDS Internet
308-382-5670 Ext. 232
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