Charles Bowman wrote:
> It's my understanding of the LTSP documentation that thin clients are in
> the same building, and connected to the server by wires. I am wondering
> if LTSP could be used to connect geographically dispersed thin clients
> to a server. Most of the thin clients are within 10 miles of the
> intended server, but a few are 60 miles away.
>
> If LTSP is not appropriate, is there another way to solve the problem?
LTSP depends on several services to work:
-DHCP to hand out client IP address, server IP address, and the name of
the kernel to load
-TFTP to hand out kernels
-NFS to give clients a file system
-XDMCP to give clients a graphical login
DHCP only works on local networks; you will need to solve this problem
some other way. There are several ways to do this.
I'm not sure how well TFTP works over wide-area networks; I've never
tried it.
NFS and XDMCP will work fine over wide-area networks.
There are a couple of ways to deal with this.
A) Put an LTSP server at each remote office
B) Put a trimmed-down LTSP server at each remote office; all it really
needs to serve are DHCP and TFTP.
C) Put hard drives in all remote clients, and put the kernel there. You
can either use NFS for the root file system or you can put everything on
the clients' hard drives. There are pluses and minuses to either
approach; it will essentially be a tradeoff between how fast a machine
can get started and how much trouble it is to keep everything working.
The more you keep locally, the faster the machines will boot but the
more you have to maintain.
Also, you need to consider that NFS and XDMCP are designed for use on
secure networks, not the Internet. If your remote offices connect via
dedicated circuits, there's no problem; if they come in over the open
Internet, you will need to set up a secure VPN.
Does this help?
-David
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