[K12OSN] 1 thin client = 4 terminals?

[Jeff Kinz]

On Sun, Jul 04, 2004 at 08:41:48PM -0400, "Terrell Prudé, Jr." wrote:
> I wouldn't do it.  Here's why.  If you want to hook up more than one 
> keyboard and mouse to a LTSP client, then you need at least two things:
> 
> 1.)  some way to physically hook up the other monitors, keyboards, and 
> mice, and
> 2.)  some way to separate each of the four sessions.

They did all that, special kernel, all seats at same table etc..
usb kyb and mice.  
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.c3sl.ufpr.br%2Ffourhead&langpair=pt%7Cen&hl=pt&ie=UTF-8&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools

If you happen to have a lot of usb keyboards, and usb mice and extra
monitors, and extra video cards this is a way to stretch your hardware.

If you can afford the hardware, plain old LTSP is a better solution. 
As for multi-seating an ltsp TC, any TC configured robustly enough to
handle this setup is a server!

Their setup handles the connection issues mentioned below.

> 
> let's first take the case of a regular "fat client" PC.  In a "fat 
> client", you could install a bunch of serial ports in the thing, have, 
> say, four VT100 terminals, and do it like that.  The VT100 terminal, in 
> this case, is itself handling the display, as all terminals, including 
> the ancient IBM 3278 mainframe terminals, do.  You *have* to do it this 
> way otherwise it'd be like PCAnywhere in which someone logging into 
> PCAnywhere will disrupt the operations of the person already sitting at 
> the console.  Other well-meaning sysadmins would do this to me all the 
> time back when I was a Windows NT Server administrator (TSE was still 
> pretty new back then, and Citrix was big bucks).  Thus, you must have 
> more than one single display engine and more than one "display control" 
> line.  I don't know if someone makes something for personal computer 
> architectures that will allow the hookup of more than one physical 
> keyboard, mouse, and monitor, and that will actually keep the I/O 
> sessions separate.  A KVM switch won't do it because that's going the 
> other way--one person using multiple computers.  It's still a single 
> "channel", if you will, of I/O; you're in this case just switching that 
> single channel to/from a different box.

-- 
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Give us this day, our daily bug And forgive address violations
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========================================== 

Linux and Open Source.  The New Base.  

Now All your base belongs to you, for free.

Jeff Kinz, Emergent Research, Hudson, MA.