[K12OSN] OOo Impress crashes with LTSP v4.2

[William Fragakis]

I accidentally found a work around for Gcompris and Childsplay instead
of windowing them. I've done it on a sample size of 1 type of
motherboard so it's not widely tested.

Those two programs like to reset the resolution when they go to full
screen and Childsplay resisted by simple attempts to window (by adding
the switch" -w" -no quotes- in the launcher. This really just stumped us
on lcd screens as they had tighter tolerances on what
resolutions/refresh rates they would run. CRTs would launch fine but
with lcds and laptops (used as thin clients) we'd have to escape the
programs blind.

When I locked the screen resolution via the lts.conf file (by
specifying, say 1024 x 768) the issue went away. I haven't had time to
try other stations, these were Thinkpads with ATI video cards, but I'd
be optimistic that it would solve the issue with at least these two
programs. 

My personal, home k12ltsp workstation running ver. 5 runs Impress full
screen presentations fine. But, it, too, has the rez specified in the
lts.conf file.

Hope this helps,
William Fragakis
morrisbrandon.com  


On Tue, 2006-09-05 at 19:26 -0400, k12osn-request at redhat.com wrote:
> 
> Message: 14
> Date: Tue, 05 Sep 2006 16:29:50 -0400
> From: "James P. Kinney III" <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
> Subject: Re: [K12OSN] OOo Impress crashes with LTSP v4.2
> To: "Support list for open source software in schools."
>         <k12osn at redhat.com>
> Message-ID: <1157488190.6254.174.camel at merlin.localnetsolutions.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> 
> On Tue, 2006-09-05 at 15:19 -0400, John Lucas wrote:
> > I have run across an annoying little "gotcha" using LTSP v4.2
> (updated to 
> > latest via ltspadmin). Everything works as expected *except* when
> attempting 
> > to run any slide show in OOo Impress. Using Impress to create or
> convert a 
> > presentation works fine, you just can't view the slideshow from a
> diskless 
> > workstation. Once the screen clears and the first slide appears,
> the 
> > application closes. This only happens for diskless workstations
> running as 
> > X-terminals; running the same application via VNC or via X on a
> stand-alone 
> > (on the same server) workstation works fine.
> > 
> > In order to narrow the problem space, I installed LTSP v4.1 and
> tested the 
> > same application from a diskless X-terminal works fine. This
> indicates to me 
> > that it is something in the kernel or on the root directory of the
> diskless 
> > terminal.
> > 
> > The problem seems to be either in the LTSP kernel or Xorg server
> supplied with 
> > LTSP v4.2. 
> > 
> > My setup uses K12LTSP v5.0.0 (Fedora Core 5) with all updates
> installed and 
> > LTSP updated via ltspadmin. I have tried kernel versions 2.6.17.3
> and 
> > 2.6.17.8 with the same results.
> > 
> > Has anyone run across this problem?
> 
> Not with OOo Impress but with ANY app that wants to run full-screen.
> All
> of the little apps (gcompris and some others) are now tweaked on the
> new
> setup to not run full-screen. It will lock out the local console and
> can
> only be recovered by rebooting the thin client.
> 
> For gcompris, we made a script to start gcompris in a window. In
> Impress, click on SlideShow->Slide Show Settings then select "Window"
> instead of default. That will make it work for the current
> presentation.
> I don't know how to make it "stick" for new ones unless the blank
> template is edited. But that won't stop someone from using the
> "default"
> setting manually.
> > 
> -- 
> James P. Kinney III          
> CEO & Director of Engineering 
> Local Net Solutions,LLC        
> 770-493-8244                    
> http://www.localnetsolutions.com
> 
> GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
> <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
> Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7