We have roughly 100 diskless thin clients here running LTSP, all for RDP. This morning I had a thought, so I'm hoping some discussion here might help to enlighten us on where this might lead me.
Please correct me if I'm wrong: both thin and fat clients load a basic Linux OS from the tftp server. From there, thin clients normally connect to a remote desktop, while fat clients continue to load the whole OS, desktop and all, locally. Local app setups are a hybrid, where the desktop is remote, but certain apps are run locally. rdesktop/freerdp clients work like a thin client, only the remote desktop is a Windows server rather than a Linux server. Local apps don't exist in this case, however rdesktop is already being run locally as part of the thin image. The only difference I see between a fat and thin client in this case then, is that the thin client mounts its root filesystem via NBD (or NFS for some), while a fat client mounts its fs in RAM. The only real beef I have with our current setup is that if the LTSP server reboots or becomes unreachable to the thin client on the network for any reason, the client loses its root fs. Although rdesktop continues to function in most cases, the thin client will no longer shut down at the scheduled time, and can't be controlled in any useful manner via ssh. So I guess what I'm wondering ultimately is if converting my thin clients to fat clients would overcome this NBD-unreachable problem we face from time to time (where clients have to be power cycled to recover), and whether there might be other consequences to this change. Thoughts before I start to experiment? db ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _____________________________________________________________________ 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
