Karl Huysmans wrote: >Hi all, > >I want to do a terminal server with about 40 thin clients using >Gentoo. All thin clients will be able to boot PXE, boot image(s) on >one server. Clients will only connect to the server using XDM, desktop >will be KDE. > >Questions: > >-Does anyone have experience? > > A bit, more with PXE and diskless booting then terminal servers
>-Which is best, PXES, LTSP or just plain syslinux and use a minimal >modified Gentoo install for booting the thin clients? > > I found PXE Booting was the best for me, and there was a nice wiki howto on the gentoo wiki site. And I used PXElinux for it (part of syslinux) for the bootloader >(I have already tried a few options, PXES complains about ram disk >space while creating the initrd, couldn't figure out why, > cant help, didnt use initrd with my kernels >ltsp splash >screen garbles screen during client boot, > you mean the kernel boot messages are garbled? is this is the case it may be the framebuffer device (that was the problem with me, solved by disabling framebuffer) > last option seems to work, >but of course I need to tweak the init scripts a bit. Anyone any >experience with one of these options and their problems?) > >-I would like to implement Win4Lin terminal server, anyone any experience? > sorry, not me > >-Server hardware, have a dual Xeon 2.8 available, curently 2 GB of RAM >is this enough? > > I did it using a PII 450Mhz with 512 Mb Ram, but then it wasnt with 40 clients (more like 3, this was more an attempt at learning how to do it then a production setup) and it didnt use terminal server, so I cant really comment on this. >-Any advantage in using Gigabti ethernet for the clients? > > Well, generally the faster the better, if you are going to mount your root FS on the server with NFS (which i presume you will) every PC will be using the network for filesystem access, if 40 clients are used at the same time then the bandwidth is shared between them (and e.g. sharing a 10mbit link between 40 clients will result in very slow machines) but note that if you use gigabit links you must make sure that the servers hard disk can provide the required transfer rates (otherwise that becomes a bottleneck) >From my experience: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10mbit is slooow, avoid at all costs if you want users to use the system (for embedded devices/media players you could get away with it) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 100mbit is pretty good, it is not the fastest but it is perfectly usable by people (provided that not too many clients are running at once and sharing the bandwidth) (100 / 40 = 2.5 mbits per client in your case) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1000mbit i have never used (dont have the hardware) but you will need some exotic setup (you would probably need some sort of raid setup to get 122MB/s transfer rates) Gigabit is best suited for lots of clients who will need to simultanoisly use the link (1000 / 40 = 25mbits per client in your case) So probably gigabit it good for you =) but that will depend on the usage of the clients >-Client hardware, anyone any experience with dedicated thin clients? > > nope, sorry >-Audio ??? Any ideas? > > What do you mean? that each client has audio working? it can be done, my media player is running diskless (make sure your kernel has all the required audio drivers, having the same hardware helps in this case) >Thanks for any help! >-- >gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list > > > > -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
