Pascal;

>Yes, you're right, but, if I understand, the LTSP solution for
>local apps needs NFS along the time you use the applications,
>with initrd and cloop we need to use the network only for the
>tftpboot and after not, if I misunderstand the LTPS local apps
>NFS requirement, can you explain it to me, I know that my bad
>English some times run me in mistakes :-).

LTSP clients mount a NFS partition from the server as its
root directory.  Applications are run on the terminals as
though they were local files.  This is how LTSP supports
The X Window System and other applications.  I just put
"gflashplayer" (stand-alone Flash player) on the server 
in "/opt/ltsp/i386/usr/bin" and am now able to access it 
from client as though it is a local program (I also had
to copy several library files, too).

This approach has the advantage that local applications
can be present, but only impose a network load if used.
This is especially handy for X since multiple server
images can be available for different video hardware, 
but the only one that is sent over the network is the
one used by the client.  Same goes for fonts and *lots*
of other files.


>Only the kernel will be in the initrd, after booting the kernel
>mount a compressed system in ramdisk, for compression cloop is
>used ( if I understand ..... ;-) ), but this is always as you
>says for the boot time.

And how will this compressed image get to the terminals?
As part of initrd?


>Yes, I know, what I'm trying to do is a little Debian.
>(see below) and the cloop will avoid the decompression.

I'm guessing this is a compressed loop driver, so you 
can mount a compressed filesystem as though it were
a local directory?  Good idea, but I think it would
affect performance.  Knoppix does something like this,
but they also use memory caching to prevent decompressing
the same data over and over.


>Yes, I've to run a Java client application, about 40 Mo after
>decompressing , I hope that I can make this, Debian and Java
>application less than 400 Mo.

By "Mo", do you mean Mbytes?  If so, your terminals must
have *a lot* of memory?  This is one of the advantages
of LTSP - leaner on memory requirements.  But NFS is the
tradeoff.


>At the moment I can make a distro with debootstrap which is
>80 Mo (no perl, no man, no doc ....), or one about 250 Mo with
>perl, doc, man .....
>
>I know that I can make a little kernel because there is no
>sound, no Ide, no Video, 1 or 2 kind of eth cards, no Scsi ....

>But, for the Xwindow, it's more, more, more difficult, and at
>this time  I need more informations from my customer to know
>what exactly needs it,s application for display, if vga is
>enough, perhaps I can avoid Xwindow.
>
>If you have informations about "displaying" without Xwindow,
>I'll be very glade, if you can give it to me.

There is a lot you can do without X, but if your client
wants GUI applications, X is the way to go.  If character
based apps are acceptable, there are many tools to develop
with, both open source and commercial.  You can even
develop them to use a mouse (via gpm).

There are *lots* of issues with trying to run X on several
different types of computers.  Differences in video hardware
make it difficult to come up with one solution that works
on all your terminals.


> You'd be better off using a remote session viewer,
> like VNC.  There are several VNC compatible clients
> for Linux and they work better if the server is
> running X rather than Windoze.

>Yes I know, I looked to TightVnc, and Yes, it's better with
>Xwindow server ;-), but if there is between 30 and 50 stations
>which use the client/server app 24h/24h 7j/7j .... (it's an
>industrial environment without fault tolerance), I think it can
>not work very well on the network, this is true or not?

TightVNC is good, but to use it with Linux, you've got
to run it from X.  But you wouldn't have to have all
of X to use it.  This would relieve you of the need
for java on the clients - the JVM would instead run
on the server.  I have read that recently it has been
improved for scalability.

The worst thing about VNC is the updates when viewing
a session from a Windoze-based VNC server.  With Linux,
it's pretty good.

Hope this helps,

Tom

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Thomas L. Griffing         Red Hat Certified Engineer
  Pondus Solutions, Inc.    [EMAIL PROTECTED]



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