[K12OSN] Tuning LTSP Performance

[Todd O'Bryan]

On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 5:01 PM, Calvin Dodge <caldodge at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2008/8/29 Stephen Crampton <SteveSings at gmail.com>:
> > I'm using the latest version of Edubuntu.
> >
> > I'm not sure how to check the CPU or network load.  Could someone tell me
> > the most efficient way?
>
> IMHO, gkrellm is probably the simplest way. It displays moving graphs
> of server metrics, including CPU usage and network bandwidth. If it's
> not installed, I'm pretty sure it's readily available for your distro.
>
> /sbin/lspci will tell you what hardware is installed, so you can tell
> us the make and model of the server's NIC. Meanwhile, my wild guess is
> that it's a network issue - either the NIC, or the switch.  That's why
> you want to "cat /proc/net/dev" after running Tuxtype and such - it
> will tell you if packet errors or drops are significant contributors
> to the problem.
>
> Calvin
>

To follow on with this, we noticed that our server that was running
wonderfully last year on the  64-bit kernel was having lots of problems on
the 32-bit server kernel. It turns out that the 32-bit server kernel and the
driver for the onboard NIC don't play so well together and we'd keep getting
dropped connection errors. I spent $25 on a new NIC and the speed went back
up.

The moral--sometimes the weirdest things can cause issues. And--in my
case--it's really good to have a smart student who knows how to check the
syslog.
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