[K12OSN] Off-topic Ultrasparc in K12LTSP

[Petre Scheie]

Sun boxes, by default, listen for XDMCP requests; it's part of their "the 
network is the computer" philosophy, in that they make it so you can log into 
any machine on the network no matter which machine you sit down in front of 
(assuming the machines are all Suns).  In the case of your LTSP clients, they 
already had the kernel and X loaded, so when your LTSP server went down, they 
just rebroadcast for another server to connect to, similar to when a user logs 
out of the client and X resets and then gets the login screen for the LTSP 
server.  I suspect that any clients that weren't already booted would not come 
up in this situation because there was no server to provide a kernel, etc.

You may have had 20 workstations at a login screen, but how many were then 
actually logged in and running apps?  A UltraSparc 1 would give you OpenWindows 
and perhaps Common Desktop Environment (CDE) for choices of desktops, both of 
which consume a lot less memory than KDE or Gnome; I suspect CDE consumes more 
than IceWM, but OpenWindows will beat them all in consuming the least amount of 
resources--it's also the most barebones environment.  Try logging in on a bunch 
of the clients and run a few apps;  I suspect it will keep up for a bit, but 
soon will start swapping.

Petre

norbert wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've had something strange occur while trying to use an Ultrasparc 1 
> with Solaris 9 as a workstation. I was having some networking problems 
> with the cable-modem, so I shut down my ltsp server but as I did the 
> thin-clients logged into the Sparc. I don't quite understand why since 
> I'm not running NFS shares nor DHCP on the Ultrasparc.
> 
> Anyone with more Solaris knowledge that can enlighten me will be greatly 
> apppreciate. Strange thing is that this is a 167Mhz UltraSparc processor 
> with 256 MB of memory and it had 20 Workstations logged in. Whereas my 
> main server is a P-IV 2.8 Ghz with 2 GB memory for the same number of 
> clients and the Sparc seems to be faster !!!
> 
> thks
> norbert
> 
> _______________________________________________
> K12OSN mailing list
> K12OSN at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn
> For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>
>