[K12OSN] Experience at Glenburn this week.

[David Trask]

"Support list for opensource software in schools." <k12osn at redhat.com>
writes:
>Thanks, I will try a different session type.  So, are you finding a
>noticeable speed increase with IceVM?  We had a good time this week.  But,
>now I think I need to get better a tweaking the process.
>
>Our server is 2 xeon processors, somewhere over 2.5 gig,  and 4 Gig of
>memory., we had a lab of 28, a lab of 14, and a lab of 7 this week.  Most
>times we had about around 35-40 teachers on at the same time.  For the
>most part we go good performance.  A couple of the major issues
>
>1) Occassional Lockups -- some of the orphan process variety, where if I
>logged on as root, I could see the user's process, using the ps -u
>username command and I could kill processes to get them unlocked   
>But the problem lockup was when I did a ps -u username command and nothing
>showed, yet the user's station was locked up.  At that point we did reboot
>the specific client.  But, while it wasn't terrible, we did get a couple
>to 3 per 1 1/2 class session.  And then sometimes we got a person who just
>seemed to lock them up several machines in a row, and that was after I
>check to see if they had active processes before they logged in again.

Have you enabled "purge-users"?  Go to /opt/ltsp/templates/k12linux  and
run the gdm-kdm purge user script....also open it in a text editor and it
will tell you that you need to go to /etc/sysconfig/k12ltsp and change the
line about purging users from "no" to "yes".  It kills any remaining
processes when a user logs off or when they do a terminal reboot.  Very
cool.  We had a lengthy discussion about it and the list basically came up
with it (with Eric's help of course) after trying several other
"not-so-nice" methods.
>
>
>2) Some slowdowns.  We hit a wall today when we were teaching First Class,
>I couldn't even log on the main server as root it go so slow.  I had to
>have one lab log off and just watch the instructor demonstrate.  I wish
>they would upgrade the Linux First Class beta client, wow is it buggy, but
>our staff lives and dies by first class.  And the web version is still
>clunky.

The web version of 8.0 is awesome...looks just like the client...you
gotta' check it out!  I agree...in 7.1 the web interface is clunky, but in
8.0 it's very slick.  You have a desktop and everything!  PS.  Version 16
beta is less crash prone than version 17.
>
>
>Maybe we should switch to icevm.  I hate to switch the faculty after this
>great week of work, but I guess they mostly use the education menu, Open
>Office, mozilla and First class, so if I modify the IceVM menu to reflect
>those, we would be in good shape.

You can modify IceWM to your hearts content....use IceMC  'icemc"  already
should be installed.  Disregard the first error message and navigate to
/usr/share/icewm  and edit the menu file.  Very cool.  I also like IceCC 
or icecc   google and download it....it too is slick.
>
>
>other "best practices" tips to improve server performance.

Use gigabit!  Do you have gigabit cards in the server?  If not you NEED
them.  Are you coming out of the server and into a gigabit switch?  If not
you NEED to!  The difference is astronomical!  Amer.com has great deals on
gig switches and gig uplink switches.....I use several of the SR24G2 
switches.


David N. Trask
Technology Teacher/Coordinator
Vassalboro Community School
dtrask at vcs.u52.k12.me.us
(207)923-3100