Setting up a file server for a diskless X-Terminal

Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com
Tue Sep 18 01:22:40 UTC 2007


Craig White wrote:

>>> I'd expect much better performance with the ltsp approach (running 
>>> only X on the client with the desktop and apps on the faster machine) 
>>> than you would have running the 2nd machine as a workstation with 
>>> everything mounted via NFS.
>>>
>> I don't like the looks of K12LTSP. It seems to limit you to running FC5. 
>> I'd like to set this up with F8 when it comes out.
>>
>> Oh well. It looks like it is not possible to do what I want to do. At 
>> least not easily.
> ----
> my objection to k12ltsp is that it is a turnkey setup.

You object to something that works as installed?  You can still break it 
if you like, just like any other fedora or Centos install - and there is 
no requirement to keep any of the canned/working configs.  A lot of 
people reconfigure to use a single nic and have set up load balancing 
among servers.

> ltsp rides on whatever you have installed. Fedora though would require
> using ltsp 4.2.x because ltsp 5.x is only ubuntu/debian at the moment

There is a similar project called edubuntu that may eventually work out. 
  The people on the k12ltsp mailing list that are using both say that 
edubuntu is still rough around the edges - as you might expect from the 
comparative ages of the distributions.  The beta F7 k12ltsp version 
might be using ltsp 5.x (and that might be why it is not released 
yet...).  I think a lot people are using the one based on Centos 5.0 now.

> The point of using ltsp is that it does all the heavy lifting for you
> and in essence would give you exactly what you want (diskless
> workstations) and the only difference is that you ***think*** you want
> to do it in your own prescribed way. LTSP sets it all up as an NFS
> server, thus you get the tftp bootup, then nfs mount the software (i.e.
> the file server).
> 
> Easily of course, is always subjective

K12ltsp is as easy as any fedora install, since the other packages just 
come along for the ride.  I'd recommend trying one under vmware (and you 
can boot a virtual vmware thin client from it too) just to see the 
configuration and setup scripts even if you don't end up using it.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com





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