RE: Thin Terminals
Does it dance the Sun Ray dance, or are we back to rolling our own? Ceri Huh? Clearly, its not as attractive as a Sun Ray. But I dunno about dancing and rolling.. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Thin Terminals
On 24/9/06 13:52, Ansar Mohammed [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Does it dance the Sun Ray dance, or are we back to rolling our own? Ceri Huh? Clearly, its not as attractive as a Sun Ray. But I dunno about dancing and rolling.. Does it work with Sun Ray server? Ceri -- That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all. -- Moliere ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Thin Terminals
On 20/9/06 13:37, Robert Davison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've been looking at the Sun Ray terminals and like the idea of using thin clients to connect to the main server to run apps. Are they any programms in thr ports which allow a similar set-up using FreeBSD. I know you can do this with X but would need a tutorial to help me through it. Anyone had a go at connecting a sun ray to FreeBSD or are the protocols totally different. The Sun Ray Server software runs on Linux as well as Solaris, so I'd say that there's an outside chance that it might work. One day I'll get round to buying a Sun Ray client and try it out. Ceri -- That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all. -- Moliere ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Thin Terminals
The Netier xl2000 is a much better platform. It's an amd k6 and upgradable to 128Mb RAM. You can get them on ebay for about 10$ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:owner-freebsd- [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ceri Davies Sent: September 23, 2006 5:53 AM To: Robert Davison; Freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Thin Terminals On 20/9/06 13:37, Robert Davison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've been looking at the Sun Ray terminals and like the idea of using thin clients to connect to the main server to run apps. Are they any programms in thr ports which allow a similar set-up using FreeBSD. I know you can do this with X but would need a tutorial to help me through it. Anyone had a go at connecting a sun ray to FreeBSD or are the protocols totally different. The Sun Ray Server software runs on Linux as well as Solaris, so I'd say that there's an outside chance that it might work. One day I'll get round to buying a Sun Ray client and try it out. Ceri -- That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all. -- Moliere ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions- [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Thin Terminals
On 23/9/06 20:05, Ansar Mohammed [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:owner-freebsd- [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ceri Davies Sent: September 23, 2006 5:53 AM To: Robert Davison; Freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Thin Terminals On 20/9/06 13:37, Robert Davison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've been looking at the Sun Ray terminals and like the idea of using thin clients to connect to the main server to run apps. Are they any programms in thr ports which allow a similar set-up using FreeBSD. I know you can do this with X but would need a tutorial to help me through it. Anyone had a go at connecting a sun ray to FreeBSD or are the protocols totally different. The Sun Ray Server software runs on Linux as well as Solaris, so I'd say that there's an outside chance that it might work. One day I'll get round to buying a Sun Ray client and try it out. The Netier xl2000 is a much better platform. It's an amd k6 and upgradable to 128Mb RAM. You can get them on ebay for about 10$ Does it dance the Sun Ray dance, or are we back to rolling our own? Ceri -- That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all. -- Moliere ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Thin Terminals
I've been looking at the Sun Ray terminals and like the idea of using thin clients to connect to the main server to run apps. Are they any programms in thr ports which allow a similar set-up using FreeBSD. I know you can do this with X but would need a tutorial to help me through it. Anyone had a go at connecting a sun ray to FreeBSD or are the protocols totally different. Message sent by BlackBerry from Vodafone ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Thin Terminals
Robert Davison wrote: I've been looking at the Sun Ray terminals and like the idea of using thin clients to connect to the main server to run apps. Are they any programms in thr ports which allow a similar set-up using FreeBSD. I know you can do this with X but would need a tutorial to help me through it. I think the common solution today is diskless clients where the server is merely a fileserver and the applications actually run on the client. I do not know which scales better - the diskless may cause more network traffic as applications are read but do not continuously communicate with the server. With diskless you need less processing power on the server, but the total processing power may be higher with less utilization. You can build diskless and silent clients with Mini-ITX boards from VIA at a reasonable price. The advantage is that you will have everything in common i386/FreeBSD working environment. Cheers, Erik -- Ph: +34.666334818 web: http://www.locolomo.org X.509 Certificate: http://www.locolomo.org/crt/8D03551FFCE04F0C.crt Key ID: 69:79:B8:2C:E3:8F:E7:BE:5D:C3:C3:B1:74:62:B8:3F:9F:1F:69:B9 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Thin terminals for FreeBSD
On Monday 07 August 2006 21:19, Nagy László wrote: I need to setup an environment where some users (10 to 20 employees) will use terminals to run programs. They need to run a few popular programs: thunderbird, firefox, adobe acrobat, openoffice and gaim. Jamie Zawinski has done such a thing in his DNA Lounge club; albeit using Linux. He describes this project in detail: http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/src/kiosk/ -- The ability of the OSS process to collect and harness the collective IQ of thousands of individuals across the Internet is simply amazing. - Vinod Vallopillil http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/halloween4.html ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Thin terminals for FreeBSD
cpghost [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'm using EPIA 5000 mini-ATX boards with 512 MB RAM, diskless booting from an NFS server. They load X.org and everything else on demand. Compared to local HDDs, there's a small performance hit when loading programs [and those boards are not the fastest, though 100% silent ;-)], but users here are happy enough with them. Ditto: I have one of these in my kitchen and like it -- no sysadm, silent, etc. Not the fastest but mine is 3 years old. Only problem I've noticed is if Mozilla (or whatever) uses all the RAM then X11 restarts, losing your sessions. Doesn't happen all the time. One day I'll set up swap to run over the net. I really like the fact that I install stuff like Mozilla and other software on one box (the server) and its immediately available around the house on the rest of the boxes. The less sysadm I do the better. - Do I need to use gigabit ethernet? Or is it enough to use a normal 100 Mbps wired network? I heard that there can be bandwidth problems when using many terminals, but I do not have experience. For a diskless setup, 100 MB switched on the client side is enough; but you'd definitely prefer gigabit ethernet on the NFS server. I'm using switched 100Mbps ether but I only have the one diskless client. I have a couple other clients mounting just some of the filesystems over the net and would prefer GigE but it's not bad as it is. I'd definitely do this diskless thing if I had 10-20 client terminals to set up, like in an internet cafe or something. If they get wedged, who cares: just power-cycle them. :-) ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Thin terminals for FreeBSD
the EPIA's look nice but cost too much. For comparable performance you can retrofit an old netier XL2000 on ebay with a laptop hard drive. They are small, fanless and come with an AMD 400-450 Mhz proc. They usually go for about 10$ on ebay. You need to get an internal laptop IDE cable and a laptopn hard drive... they also support netboot! So yo dont really need the hard drive, On 8/9/06, Chris Shenton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: cpghost [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'm using EPIA 5000 mini-ATX boards with 512 MB RAM, diskless booting from an NFS server. They load X.org and everything else on demand. Compared to local HDDs, there's a small performance hit when loading programs [and those boards are not the fastest, though 100% silent ;-)], but users here are happy enough with them. Ditto: I have one of these in my kitchen and like it -- no sysadm, silent, etc. Not the fastest but mine is 3 years old. Only problem I've noticed is if Mozilla (or whatever) uses all the RAM then X11 restarts, losing your sessions. Doesn't happen all the time. One day I'll set up swap to run over the net. I really like the fact that I install stuff like Mozilla and other software on one box (the server) and its immediately available around the house on the rest of the boxes. The less sysadm I do the better. - Do I need to use gigabit ethernet? Or is it enough to use a normal 100 Mbps wired network? I heard that there can be bandwidth problems when using many terminals, but I do not have experience. For a diskless setup, 100 MB switched on the client side is enough; but you'd definitely prefer gigabit ethernet on the NFS server. I'm using switched 100Mbps ether but I only have the one diskless client. I have a couple other clients mounting just some of the filesystems over the net and would prefer GigE but it's not bad as it is. I'd definitely do this diskless thing if I had 10-20 client terminals to set up, like in an internet cafe or something. If they get wedged, who cares: just power-cycle them. :-) ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Thin terminals for FreeBSD
Chris Shenton wrote: cpghost [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'm using EPIA 5000 mini-ATX boards with 512 MB RAM, diskless booting from an NFS server. They load X.org and everything else on demand. Compared to local HDDs, there's a small performance hit when loading programs [and those boards are not the fastest, though 100% silent ;-)], but users here are happy enough with them. Ditto: I have one of these in my kitchen and like it -- no sysadm, silent, etc. Not the fastest but mine is 3 years old. Only problem I've noticed is if Mozilla (or whatever) uses all the RAM then X11 restarts, losing your sessions. Doesn't happen all the time. One day I'll set up swap to run over the net. Have you enabled any swap? Of course, swap over nfs is not desirable, but it's preferred over running out of memory. I have forgotten the details, but basically you create a swap file of the required size like this # dd if=/dev/zero of=/path/to/swapfile bs=1k count=64k (to get 64MB) and mount that. Note, that if you have more diskless clients, then each must have it's own swap. Also, currently, by default, memory fs's are created for /var and /tmp if you use 6.X, using up your RAM. Try tuning that, and create a link /tmp - /var/tmp to save space. Cheers, Erik -- Ph: +34.666334818 web: http://www.locolomo.org X.509 Certificate: http://www.locolomo.org/crt/8D03551FFCE04F0C.crt Key ID: 69:79:B8:2C:E3:8F:E7:BE:5D:C3:C3:B1:74:62:B8:3F:9F:1F:69:B9 smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: Thin terminals for FreeBSD
Ansar Mohammed [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: the EPIA's look nice but cost too much. For comparable performance you can retrofit an old netier XL2000 on ebay with a laptop hard drive. They are small, fanless and come with an AMD 400-450 Mhz proc. They usually go for about 10$ on ebay. You need to get an internal laptop IDE cable and a laptopn hard drive... they also support netboot! So yo dont really need the hard drive, Sure, agreed. The EPIA's just what I needed for the space I had at the time. I was just pointing out that diskless boxes, net booting, and NFS mounted apps are a big win. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Thin terminals for FreeBSD
Nagy László wrote: Hello, I need to setup an environment where some users (10 to 20 employees) will use terminals to run programs. They need to run a few popular programs: thunderbird, firefox, adobe acrobat, openoffice and gaim. This site will be a customer service. We decided to reduce the costs by using Open Source software and cheap terminal computers. This is a good solution because most of the users will read messages and images on the screen and they can share the same processor and memory easily. I know that I can setup cheap computers and use its X server as a terminal for another central computer. This solution still requires new (or used) computers. I would like to reduce the costs to the minimum. Here are some key questions that I could not answer: - Is there a more cost-effective solution? (Something that I did not think of) - How much RAM will I need? Will FireFox Thunderbird and OpenOffice load shared objects and reduce the overall memory usage? Or should I reserve 256MB of memory for each client? - Do I need to use gigabit ethernet? Or is it enough to use a normal 100 Mbps wired network? I heard that there can be bandwidth problems when using many terminals, but I do not have experience. - Are there any pitfalls that I need to be aware of? It would be perfect to provide links to some articles or manuals - I do not need anyone to write detailed instuctions and do my job. I'm asking for help because the handbook was not very useful in this case. I only found this: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/term.html#TERM-X It does not help too much, and there is no know-how. I really need to know what hardware I need to buy. Remember that the main cost is maintenance, not the hardware. I think that the way to do it is not dumb terminals in the old sense, but rather sharing disks, while each terminal runs processes separately and have lot's of RAM - 1GB. 100Mbps network should be ok, just make sure it's switched (which all are nowadays), it's only loading the applications that is slow - once up, there is not much on the network when applications run on the client and there is plenty of RAM. I would think that more RAM gives better user experience than faster network. Some recommends booting off a flashrom, but the disadvantage is upgrading the base system has to be done on each client. For example: Buy some mini-itx MB's with 1GB ram. For desktop use, processor is not important, RAM is. So get some fanless MB's. I have found that VIA MB's are easy to work with, support pxeboot, see this site: www.mini-itx.com. Then you need one file server to allow NFS mount of everything. I sat down and wrote about it, but I never got through to have a working diskless with all the bells and whistles, see this article: www.daemonsecurity.com/pub/pxeboot/ Other sources are the pxe and diskless articles in www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/ Cheers, Erik -- Ph: +34.666334818 web: http://www.locolomo.org X.509 Certificate: http://www.locolomo.org/crt/8D03551FFCE04F0C.crt Key ID: 69:79:B8:2C:E3:8F:E7:BE:5D:C3:C3:B1:74:62:B8:3F:9F:1F:69:B9 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Thin terminals for FreeBSD
Hello, I need to setup an environment where some users (10 to 20 employees) will use terminals to run programs. They need to run a few popular programs: thunderbird, firefox, adobe acrobat, openoffice and gaim. This site will be a customer service. We decided to reduce the costs by using Open Source software and cheap terminal computers. This is a good solution because most of the users will read messages and images on the screen and they can share the same processor and memory easily. I know that I can setup cheap computers and use its X server as a terminal for another central computer. This solution still requires new (or used) computers. I would like to reduce the costs to the minimum. Here are some key questions that I could not answer: - Is there a more cost-effective solution? (Something that I did not think of) - How much RAM will I need? Will FireFox Thunderbird and OpenOffice load shared objects and reduce the overall memory usage? Or should I reserve 256MB of memory for each client? - Do I need to use gigabit ethernet? Or is it enough to use a normal 100 Mbps wired network? I heard that there can be bandwidth problems when using many terminals, but I do not have experience. - Are there any pitfalls that I need to be aware of? It would be perfect to provide links to some articles or manuals - I do not need anyone to write detailed instuctions and do my job. I'm asking for help because the handbook was not very useful in this case. I only found this: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/term.html#TERM-X It does not help too much, and there is no know-how. I really need to know what hardware I need to buy. Thank you Laszlo ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Thin terminals for FreeBSD
In these days of commodity PC pricing running X-terminals isn't really cost effective. You'd be better off buying 10 - 20 identical PC's loading and configuring one, and then clone the drive for the rest. Using X-terminals will likely cost more per unit, and produce more load on the server, the only positive to X-terminals is in configuration and maintenance. That's my 2 cents anyway. -Derek At 02:19 PM 8/7/2006, =?ISO-8859-2?Q?Nagy_L=E1szl=F3?= wrote: Hello, I need to setup an environment where some users (10 to 20 employees) will use terminals to run programs. They need to run a few popular programs: thunderbird, firefox, adobe acrobat, openoffice and gaim. This site will be a customer service. We decided to reduce the costs by using Open Source software and cheap terminal computers. This is a good solution because most of the users will read messages and images on the screen and they can share the same processor and memory easily. I know that I can setup cheap computers and use its X server as a terminal for another central computer. This solution still requires new (or used) computers. I would like to reduce the costs to the minimum. Here are some key questions that I could not answer: - Is there a more cost-effective solution? (Something that I did not think of) - How much RAM will I need? Will FireFox Thunderbird and OpenOffice load shared objects and reduce the overall memory usage? Or should I reserve 256MB of memory for each client? - Do I need to use gigabit ethernet? Or is it enough to use a normal 100 Mbps wired network? I heard that there can be bandwidth problems when using many terminals, but I do not have experience. - Are there any pitfalls that I need to be aware of? It would be perfect to provide links to some articles or manuals - I do not need anyone to write detailed instuctions and do my job. I'm asking for help because the handbook was not very useful in this case. I only found this: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/term.html#TERM-X It does not help too much, and there is no know-how. I really need to know what hardware I need to buy. Thank you Laszlo ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Thin terminals for FreeBSD
On Mon, Aug 07, 2006 at 09:19:30PM +0200, Nagy L?szl? wrote: I need to setup an environment where some users (10 to 20 employees) will use terminals to run programs. They need to run a few popular programs: thunderbird, firefox, adobe acrobat, openoffice and gaim. This I'm using EPIA 5000 mini-ATX boards with 512 MB RAM, diskless booting from an NFS server. They load X.org and everything else on demand. Compared to local HDDs, there's a small performance hit when loading programs [and those boards are not the fastest, though 100% silent ;-)], but users here are happy enough with them. - Do I need to use gigabit ethernet? Or is it enough to use a normal 100 Mbps wired network? I heard that there can be bandwidth problems when using many terminals, but I do not have experience. For a diskless setup, 100 MB switched on the client side is enough; but you'd definitely prefer gigabit ethernet on the NFS server. - Are there any pitfalls that I need to be aware of? Locking over NFS is a bit buggy. I had some trouble running thunderbird and firefox, as they seem to hang on some thr_*() call, and gconfd can be a bitch too over NFS, if the permissions on an NFS-mounted /tmp are not set correctly (/tmp as md ramdisk is fine though). No other known pitfalls here so far. It would be perfect to provide links to some articles or manuals - I do not need anyone to write detailed instuctions and do my job. I'm asking for help because the handbook was not very useful in this case. I only found this: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/term.html#TERM-X It does not help too much, and there is no know-how. I really need to know what hardware I need to buy. Thank you Laszlo Regards, -cpghost. -- Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Thin terminals for FreeBSD
On Tue, Aug 08, 2006 at 01:12:02AM +0200, cpghost wrote: On Mon, Aug 07, 2006 at 09:19:30PM +0200, Nagy L?szl? wrote: - Are there any pitfalls that I need to be aware of? Locking over NFS is a bit buggy. I had some trouble running thunderbird and firefox, as they seem to hang on some thr_*() call, and gconfd can be a bitch too over NFS, if the permissions on an NFS-mounted /tmp are not set correctly (/tmp as md ramdisk is fine though). No other known pitfalls here so far. Just one addition: instead of running firefox and thunderbird locally on the diskless nodes, you can also run them remotely on a box with locally mounted filesystems (using DISPLAY, which is set automatically when you use 'ssh -Y'); the thr_*() hangs disappear then. They must be NFS-related somehow. Oh, if you run X apps remotely, you don't need more than 256 MB RAM on the thin clients; perhaps even less, but you'll have to test this yourself. -cpghost. -- Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Thin terminals for FreeBSD
On Mon, Aug 07, 2006 at 02:27:30PM -0500, Derek Ragona wrote: the only positive to X-terminals is in configuration and maintenance. ...and being totally silent! In an office not necessarily that important, but in some other environments, it's very convenient! -Derek -cpghost. -- Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Thin terminals for FreeBSD
- Is there a more cost-effective solution? (Something that I did not think of) We used to build (well my colleague did that) X terminals based on a thin configuration of freeBSD (must have been version 2 at that time) that we ran on diskless computers booting from floppy. At that time we ran it on pentium 100 MHz, with something between 16 and 32 MB RAM, over a 10 MB shared Ethernet. All applications ran on the cental server, and X terminals were just that: display devices. It was a bit slow, you could not look at a video, but otherwise it worked. Of course you need more horse power on the server, but if you have a set of old PC with similar video adapters, that's an easy solution to deploy once one machine is up. Olivier ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
