[K12OSN] More feedback on Fedora 10 + LTSP

[David Hopkins]

This is my weekend update on what I did and found.

First, I deleted the ltspbr0 bridge (brctl delbr ltspbr0 ).  I then
reconfigured the formerly slaved eth1 to have the correct IP/subnet
info.  After a quick reboot (tftp didn't want to work and I couldn't
figure out which service to restart, xinetd wasn't it), all the
terminals booted.

Then, I started a few instances of Tuxmath while monitoring throughput
at the switch.  Bandwidth seems to max out at around
250Mbit/sec-350Mbit/sec (I have to estimate based on Rx Octets which
seems to be around 30M+- octets/sec)  Tuxmath crawls at this point and
is unusable.  If anyone knows of simple command line utility to
monitor the throughput at the server, I'd be happy to use it.

ethtool reports that the link is up and 1000Mb, full duplex. (mii-tool
says it is 100Mbit but that tool is quite old). dmesg also shows the
link up at 1000Mb as well.

Now, I tested the throughput between the server and the file server
using netio.  This reports that I have a sustained throughput of
114MB/sec (or about appr 900Mbit/sec) between my servers on the
network.  Since I am using the same NIC and switches for the thin
client side, I would expect about the same performance.

I then reverted back to the original server, and noticed the same
performance issue. I swapped out cables but that didn't change
anything either.

The load average on the LTSP server was around 1 with 6 clients
running tuxmath.  Memory was about 1Gb. So, my best guess is a network
bandwidth issue. Tonight I'll connect my newest server to that switch
and see if it performs better. Maybe it is just old hardware.

Now, as for installing pulseaudio

>> yep, there is a reason that CentOS/RHEL exists.  I would prefer to
>> stay with CentOS but I have to resolve sound (talk about beating a
>> dead horse issue) and with LTSP5 I have to admit that sound 'just
>> works' in all the apps I have to have (except for Audacity but I've
>> found some documentation that implies it can be made to work).
>
> Load up the EPEL repo and install pulsaudio. That will let flash sound
> work again with flash > v9 . That change clobbered everybody.

I started to do this and noticed that to do so means uninstalling
esound to avoid comflicts with the pulseaudio-esound-compat rpm.
There are a few posts (found via google) which suggest there might be
issues going this route. Since it was almost midnight, I decided to
wait until later to see if this will work. I'll find out tonight.
But, it does get back to the whole sound issue that I was hoping FC10
resolved: pulseaudio at the client. Still have to sort that out it
seems. Hopefully esd at the client will be me far enough for the
moment. :)

During the summer I'll test other distributions and approaches.

Sincerely,
Dave Hopkins
Newark Charter School
Newark Delaware