[K12OSN] I need to make Flash work faster....wanna pitch

Petre Scheie petre at maltzen.net
Wed Jan 12 15:22:54 UTC 2005


I was thinking the same thing.  Since buying another big machine to support 
FF/Flash may not be possible, perhaps one could use a handful of smaller 
machines.  Then, in the script to call FF/Flash, you have some code that says 
'if this script is being called from workstation 1 through 10, run FF/Flash on 
appserver1; if being called from workstation 11 through 20, run FF/Flash on 
appserver2' and so on.  The downside is that workstations are tied to specific 
app servers, and if one of the app servers crashes, those workstations won't 
automatically switch to another app server.  But...(thinks about it for a 
moment)...in that same FF/Flash script you could have it check to make sure its 
primary app server is up; if yes, run it from there; if no, go to the next app 
server and repeat.  I'm thinking something like this:

#!/bin/bash

case $DISPLAY in
   ws001* )
     if ping -c 1 -w 1 appsrv1
     then
       ssh appsrv1 firefox
     elif ping -c 1 -w 1 appsrv2
     then
       ssh appsrv2 firefox
     elif ping -c 1 -w 1 appsrv3
     then
       ssh appsrv3 firefox
     fi
     ;;
   ws002* )
     if ping -c 1 -w 1 appsrv2
     then
       ssh appsrv2 firefox
     elif ping -c 1 -w 1 appsrv3
     then
       ssh appsrv3 firefox
     elif ping -c 1 -w 1 appsrv1
     then
       ssh appsrv1 firefox
     fi
     ;;
esac

Someone should check my syntax with the case statement, but you get the idea. 
Note how the order of the app server changes depending on which workstation the 
request comes from.  And on the app servers, you'd want to nfs-mount the user's 
home directories, which would include ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 so users can ssh 
without needing to give a password and all the other things we've discussed 
regarding the setup of app servers.

Petre

Jim Kronebusch wrote:
>>Would it not make more sense to offload FF/Flash to a 
>>dedicated app server?
> 
> 
> That sounds like a better solution to me.  The whole local app thing
> seems to contradict what LTSP is trying to accomplish (no local HD's or
> moving parts, a "thin" client).  I think Gavin Spurgeon (sorry for
> spelling) has a tutorial on setting this up that looks very simple
> (haven't actually done it myself yet).  But the downside is I suppose
> the hardware for local apps is laying around but you most likely don't
> have another high end server.  I wonder how much of a machine would be
> needed to just run a single app like FF/Flash for x amount of users.
> 
> 




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