[K12OSN] Slow terminals

[James P. Kinney III]

On Mon, 2007-08-06 at 11:44 -0400, rmiller at seminole.k12.ga.us wrote:
> I've got two 5.0EL labs set up that we're using to test out the
> viability of using LTSP in our Elementary School and possibly in our
> Middle/High School as well. So far, the feedback has been mostly
> positive.
> 
> I've got 2 issues that are causing some reservations by the teachers.
> One is that the terminals are a little slow, especially whenever a
> student exits a program and tries to go back into it. The servers are
> struggling to keep up. Eventually, they will get back into their
> desired program, but not before they've clicked it several (dozen)
> times.

Try different X servers to get a faster one. The old vesa driver is
nearly painful.
> 
> I'm thinking that my servers may not have enough ram, but I need more
> feedback from you, the more experienced. Both labs are running an HP
> xw6000 server with a 3.2 Ghz Xeon processor, 4 GB of ram, dual 30 GB
> SCSI hard drives. There are 28 terminals in lab and 26 in the other. I
> have gigabit nics in the servers going to an HP 2650 switch (GB uplink
> port, 48 100MB ports). I would think a 3.2 Ghz Xeon would have the
> capacity, but what about doubling the ram to 8GB? Any suggestions
> would most definitely be appreciated.

Theoretically, a 1Gbit Nic _should_ handle about 700Mb/s using standard
ethernet (can't do jumbo frames in 100Mb). You are at the upper edge of
that limit with 54 clients running. Figure in at least 7Mb/s per client
just for resting state screen draws. If there is activity (all of the
games - childsplay, gcompris, tuxmath, tuxtype - are real bandwidth hogs
and can eat 20Mb/s for each instance).
> 
> The other issue relates to one of the 2 labs. In it, I have 26 Acer
> 220 laptops. I boot them off a boot floppy as PXE doesn't seem to work
> on them, but that's another issue. The biggest problem I'm having with
> them is at that I running them at 800x600 (most I can get), and some
> of the games, i.e. ChildsPlay, is shifted to the right so that about
> 1/3 of the screen is not visible. If they were standard desktop pc's
> and monitors, I could adjust the monitor's settings to move the screen
> to the left. Can't do it on the laptops. If you have any suggestions
> on this matter, I'd also appreaciate any help.

Change the launcher to include --window and they will run in a window
and not offset of the screen. The launcher(s) is(are)
in /usr/share/applications
> 
> Thanks guys for all the help you given in the past!
> 
> Ronnie
> 
> 
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-- 
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
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