Hi edubuntu-devel I've been testing flight 4, and have some questions.
1. After installing, I had to run ltsp-update-sshkeys before I could log in. Will this be fixed by release, or is it something that I might have done wrong that would require me to do this step? 2. The memory usage after boot is great- just about 32MB. With the average amount of software (OOo, firefox, etc), it goes up to about 37MB. If I open as much as I can and try to trash the system, it goes up to more or less 42MB. Does this mean that the spec for the 32MB thin client usage will mean that the initial memory usage of the thin client will be 32MB, or should it be less than that at boot and increase when opening more programs? 3. https://wiki.edubuntu.org/EdubuntuLtsConfParams reports that SWAP_SERVER is implemented, but not tested. How would I configure this? With just a SWAP_SERVER = 192.168.0.254 in the lts.conf file? The above RAM usage should be fine on a 32MB computer, if it can swap to the server. 10MB is very easy to swap out over the network. 4. The new Intel server boards have a strange "feature", where there's some kind of a gap between 3GB and 4GB RAM. This means that, if have 4GB RAM installed (typical for LTSP servers), you will only be able to see the first 3GB, and would need to install a kernel that supports 64GB RAM to see the full 4GB. Would it be possible to ship Edubuntu with a kernal for support for 64GB RAM? And what about SMP support? Does Edubuntu do that? 5. The themed LDM is much nicer than the old one. How much further is it likely to improve before release of the next Edubuntu? Would it be possible to have a session chooser and language chooser? Both are quite essential, imo. It also doesn't warn you yet when you're trying to log-on, while you're already logged onto another workstation. A configuration setting that would disallow multiple logins for the same account would be great too (sorry for feature requests ;) ). Another 'problem' (perhaps pertaining more to ssh than anything else), LDM doesn't allow logging in with passwordless accounts. In tuXlabs, we use pam_unix.so with nullok auth, to allow us to set up some passwordless guest accounts when a lab is innitially installed, meaning that learners can jump in and use the lab immediately. Is there a way for LDM to allow passwordless logins? Another suggestion has been to add a button "Guest" to the login manager, and then LDM can create a new, random account with random password, and log you in there. After your session it gets deleted. Any comments on this? 6. Will Edubuntu ship with any kind of flash plugin? I know that Macromedia's plug-in has a schleppy licence. GNU/Gnash isn't at release version yet, and the free flash plugin is very incomplete. Wouldn't it be best to include some kind of flash plugin by default though? A lot of educational content everywhere is created using flash. 7. What's the status with sound? I got a sound icon on my client taskbar, and played some .ogg files in Rhythmbox, and it looks like its playing, but no sound came out of the client. Does sound work out of the box, or does it need some additional configuration? 8. I'm trying to understand some of the LTSP tags better. I assume that they'll work a bit differently on Ubuntu LTSP than on ltsp.org. Does "XSERVER = 192.168.0.254" mean that the client should listen for an XDMCP server on 192.168.0.254, or has it been adapted to connect to an LDM session on 192.168.0.254? 9. SCREEN_01 to SCREEN_12 is reported to work, and it does, except that it breaks something else. For example, "SCREEN_01 = startx" would bring up a grey cursor with the X cursor. And the keyboard becomes unresponsive. Is this session looking for an XDMSERVER to connect to? "SCREEN_09 = shell" does give me a root terminal on tty9, but then LDM doesn't start up. There's no errors anywhere either :/ 10. I've tested thin client specific settings, for example: [00:11:25:84:CE:BA] XSERVER = ati and it works fine. Should this be marked as tested in https://wiki.edubuntu.org/EdubuntuLtsConfParams ? or is it not applicable to that page? Otherwise, the ssh tunneling seems way more efficient that XDMCP. I can't wait to see how Edubuntu will perform in the tuXlabs. We'll need to find some workaround for the RAM issue, though. Many PC's in our first 50 labs or so have 32MB RAM, perhaps they need replacement. Otherwise, the bootup speed is fantastic now. And it's nice to have a bootsplash on the thin clients as well. Can't wait to see it with the new Edubuntu artwork! -Jonathan -- edubuntu-devel mailing list edubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-devel
