[K12OSN] Tuning LTSP Performance

[Calvin Dodge]

2008/8/29 Stephen Crampton <SteveSings at gmail.com>:
> I'm trying to get a thin-client lab up and running.
>
> Currently, I have a dual-processor AMD CPU with 4 GB of RAM as my server.
> The server has a 1 GB Ethernet card.
>
> The server is connected to a 1 GB 8-port Ethernet switch.
>
> I have 7 clients attached.  They have Intel motherboards and are about 1
> year old.  They have 512 MB of memory.  They have 100 Mbps Ethernet cards.
>
> Performance is sluggish, which surprises me.  When my students are running
> something very lightweight such as kbruch, the machines run fine, however,
> if one of them opens up TuxMath or TuxTyping or some other applications,
> everything slows way down.

What brand of NIC is on the server?

When everything slows to a crawl, what's the actual network usage
(MB/s) at the server? CPU usage at that time?

Does "cat /proc/net/dev" show many errors or dropped packets during
peak network usage?

Calvin