Re: skype on diskless machine

[Daan Vreeken [PA4DAN]]

Hi Laszlo,

On Thursday 30 November 2006 13:15, Laszlo Nagy wrote:
   Hello,

 I have an appserver (6.1-RELEASE-p10) and many diskless clients
 connected to it. I'm using the diskless clients as X terminals (gdm is
 running on the appserver). Any user is able to use any terminal, because
 they run all applications on the appserver. Here is the basic problem:
 users need to use skype. I have two options:

 #1 Run skype on the diskless machine. Then it can handle audio I/O
 correctly, but the users cannot save their login names and passwords.
 (This option is also good because the diskless machine can kldload
 linux while the appserver does not need to, e.g. the appserver will be
 able to run application in native mode only).
 #2 Run skype on the appserver. Then users can save their skype login
 information but they are not able to make calls. Well, I could forward
 the audio output to the client using a sound daemon (e.g. esd
 -promiscuous -tcp -pubic -port 1500 on the diskless and esddsp -v -s
 diskless101:1500 skype_bin) but I could not find out how to forward
 digital input.  I see no way to forward digital input through a sound
 daemon, so using a microphone would be impossible.

 The question is, how can I solve this problem? Should I use #1 and tell
 my users that they must not save their skype login names and passwords?
 Or should I use #2 in combination with a special sound daemon that is
 able to forward digital input as well? (How?)

Why not just run skype on the diskless PC and have the user's home directory 
mountend over NFS?
That way you can have both things you want.

--
Daan
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Re: skype on diskless machine

[Laszlo Nagy]

Why not just run skype on the diskless PC and have the user's home directory 
mountend over NFS?

That way you can have both things you want.

  
I thought about this, but the users are never logged into the diskless 
machine. (They do not even have a home directory there. The diskless 
machine has a special rc script that executes X -query 
address_of_appserver in an infinite loop, so users are not able to 
access anything on the diskless machine.)


You are right, it would be possible to do this with NFS, but first I 
must write a new service for the diskless clients. That service could be 
asked by the appserver to mount the ~/.Skype directory of the given user 
into the home directory of the user who happens to run the X server on 
the diskless machine, and then start skype.


This new service must be called from /etc/Xclients or ~/.xinitrc on the 
appserver. At that time the username and the address of the diskless 
machine will be known.

I imagine this /etc/Xclients:

snip
# Allow the diskless machine to display skype on our screen
xhost +  address_of_the_actual_diskless_machine_used
# Ask the diskless machine to mount our .Skype directory and launch 
sykpe_bin
send_skype_start_request address_of_the_actual_diskless_machine_used 
username

# Start the wm
exec gnome-session
/snip

Well, this is the theory. But I would not like to write a new service 
program if possible. But yes, this would work. Is this the only way?


Best,

 Laszlo

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