[K12OSN] Re: More feedback on Fedora 10 + LTSP

[Sean Harbour]

Here is some more feedback on Fedora 10 + LTSP 5.

I have 2 types of servers in production:

Dual Opteron with 8 GB RAM, dual Gig ethernet.
Quad Xeon with 8GB RAM, dual Gig ethernet.

The servers are using two nics, one for internet/network access, and each is plugged into a dedicated 24 port private switch over Gigabit that all the thin clients use.

We are currently using the ltspbr0 virtual bridge device.

Perhaps the only unusual aspect is that the server is joined to a MS AD domain for student authentication and access to shared network and home folders hosted on the MS side.

Both systems will only handle up to about 15 thin clients using Fedora 10 + LTSP 5 64 bit. Typically activities are web browsing and working on reports.

Removing unneeded services/applications helps minimally.

Random students (About 15% at any one time, sometimes more, sometimes less) are experiencing the firefox already running message, slow app performance, and occasionally the keyboard mappings will scramble for no apparent reason. The keyboard scrambling can usually be recreated by pretending to be a frustrated student and pressing keys repeatedly while an app is stalled.

Also, some processes seem to hang around forever after a student logs out. After a week, the process list "ps aux | wc -l" balloons from 173 with one user after a reboot to over 1500 with one user logged in.

Killing defunct processes manually is not working very well. Fedora 10 LTSP 5 requires constant watching and manual intervention by the administrator. Rebooting the server nightly helps somewhat in reducing the hourly calls to my desk.

Warren T., if you would like direct access to one of these servers during a typical classroom day, I think I can arrange it. Let me know.

Thanks,

Sean Harbour
Northwest Regional ESD