Adrian Kuepker said:
> Is there any known syntax in dhcpd.conf  to tell new connections to boot
>  from one of multiple LTSP servers in a manner that does not require
> hard-coding?

You can do this, but dhcpd.conf is not the place for it.

There are three phases of interaction between the LTSP client terminal and
the LTSP server.  It is useful to treat them separately in discussing this
kind of situation.  They are:

- terminal boot: DHCP and TFTP
- terminal run-time: NFS
- desktop run-time: X Windows

Your question deals with two aspects: load balancing and
redundancy/availability.  The first two phases, terminal boot and terminal
run-time, *don't* need load balancing; they only need redundancy.  The
third phase, desktop run-time, is the only one that needs load balancing. 
You'll find that the DHCP booting and even NFS access of the terminal code
are not significant load.  It's the desktop apps that consume your
resources.

It is important to know that (warning: LTSP blasphemy!) there is nothing
new or revolutionary about the technology in LTSP.  What is revolutionary
is the incredible packaging and ease of installation and use.  Because of
this, questions like this are often answered in places that address the
particular technology component, and may say nothing whatsoever about
LTSP.

The load balancing would come at the X Window level with XDMCP; that's
what you'd research.  Configure the terminals to support DNS name
resolution, and use a round-robin DNS name for the LTSP desktop server
(XDMCP query target) in the lts.conf file.

And definitely share configs by using NIS, and NFS for home directories.

> Something my Boss calls 'Round-Robin', but I've never
> really understood what that means.

It just means configuring a DNS name with multiple IP addresses.  Create a
generic name to represent a group of machines, and put in the IP addresses
of each machine.  A client using that name will connect to any one in the
group, essentially at random.  If it can't connect, it will try another
address in the group.  This gives a simplistic load balancing and failover
redundancy.

- Alan





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