James wrote:
On Thursday 15 September 2005 11:31,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I just played a dvd on my ltsp workstation using the Totem Movie Player=
and got a very choppy output. On the ltsp-server the dvd played
normally. I am trying to figure out why this is the case.
=20
=20
My setup is; server: Mandrake 10.1 on a compaq deskpro pentium III, 500=
Mhz, with 260 Mb of ram. The ethernet card is a 3-COM 3C905c-TXM,
etherlink 10/100 PCI. I recently installed ltsp 4.1.1 from the
ltsp-4.1.1-1.iso isoimage.
=20
=20
The workstation is a compacq deskpro pentium I, 200 Mhz mmx, with 64 Mb=
ram. 3-COM 3c905-TX, 10/100 PCI.
=20
Using the =B4Monitor Connection=A1 utility in the "Mandrake Control Cen=
ter",
I can see that the transmition speed on eth1, which connects to my
internal network, is an average of 4.3 MB/s. This is much lower than th=
e
100 MB/s I believe my NICs are capable of giving.
=20
Is there something I should be doing to get the connection between the
server and workstation to run faster?
Running such graphics intensive applications as a movie player, sending=20
the output across the network to a thin client, will tax your network=20
severly. Although screen size and color depth can influence the=20
bandwidth usage, you are stretching all the components to their limit.
Network cards and their interrupt levels play an important part here, as =
do the cabling and switches. It may well be that the thin client CPU is=20
very busy handling the interrupts generated by the NIC, and has little=20
time to deal with the graphics. This could also be the case on the=20
server. CAT5 cables should be capable of transmitting 100 mbits/sec, but =
there might bottlenecks also there. I assume you have a switched network =
with full duplex capabilities that are used by the NICs, otherwise you=20
bandwidth will not be 100 mbits/sec in any case.
It is possible to monitor the hardware parameters on the thin client=20
(use ltspinfo, see http://wiki.ltsp.org/twiki/bin/view/Ltsp/LtspinfoTips =
for a primer), see if you can discover something from that. On the=20
server it is easier to get info, open a terminal window and use the comma=
nd
vmstat 2
to see output that will be quite revealing.
I don't believe this is network related, ok i KNOW, but <grin>:
I setup various ltsp clients to run mythtv. All were awful.
Using the Same Hardware, Same network I made a custom NFS-root system (SuSE
min-graphics + mythtv. It too was terrid.
I used the Same Hardware, Same Network, Same image (whole file system) but
installed on a local harddisk - near perfect
I used ltsp-ize to make a flash+ram version fat-client also near perfect.
I watch 3 tv streams on the same network at the same time, just as perfect.
Conclusion: NFS root == bad network video
100M network will support 2 ltsp + 3 TV without any ill effects
My slight jerkyness on fast moving scenes et MotoGP, Footy are
my videocard or the DVICO HDTV cards.
James
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I think you are right James, there may be some problems with network
bandwidth
but I think it is more complicated than that.
I use a laptop as an LTSP client. I can watch films on it fine on a wired
network so there is no fundamental problem. When I am using an 802.11g
(=54Mbps) it's hideously slow and choppy, running at about a quarter of the
correct speed. This is so even if the video size on the screen is
absolutely
tiny. The amount of data passing across the network in this case cannot
possibly be enough to swamp the network connection on its own and nothing
else is running at the same time.
There is clearly a speed difference between a 100M wired LAN and an
802.11g network, but not so much so that one works fine and the other
barely at all. I am still trying to diagnose my problem, but I suspect it
is not as simple as just raw network speed.
-------------------------------------------------------
SF.Net email is sponsored by:
Tame your development challenges with Apache's Geronimo App Server. Download
it for free - -and be entered to win a 42" plasma tv or your very own
Sony(tm)PSP. Click here to play: http://sourceforge.net/geronimo.php
_____________________________________________________________________
Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto:
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss
For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.freenode.net
