I have 14 thin clients around campus, all connecting to rdesktop
exclusively. When my ltsp server is rebooted, rdesktop on the thin
clients continues to function normally for some period of time
(usually a few hours from what I can tell), and then lose connection.
I lose ssh access to the thin clients immediately, and automatic
power-down and reboots, which are handled by cron on the tc, fail.
Basically, if the ltsp server is rebooted (or loses network access for
some amount of time), the thin clients must be manually restarted to
restore functionality.

I'm wondering if there is a way to make them more resilient. The fact
that rdesktop continues to function for some time in this situation
makes me wonder if we couldn't reduce or eliminate our dependence on
nbd (assuming this is what's failing). Obviously ldm users would still
have issues when the server goes down, but  if ssh and cron
functionality could be preserved in such a scenario, our networks
would be more self-healing, so to speak.

For example, my ltsp server encountered an error late Friday. My thin
clients were therefore non-functioning until I walked around and
power-cycled them this morning (after correcting the problem on the
server). With ssh access I could have done that from home, or even on
my backberry. When functioning normally, my clients automatically
restart at regular intervals. In transient failures, such as network
issues, a functioning cron means the clients would automatically
reconnect after such a failure.

Is there an obvious solution? Could we eliminate the need for
persistent nbd once rdesktop clients have booted? Could we mount our
root filesystem in RAM, or make ssh and cron somehow not dependent on
it? Have I entirely failed to grasp the situation?

db

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