On Wed, 24 Sep 2003, Tommi Asiala wrote: > For startes I worked within closed lan (3com hub, 12 ports, 10 mbps). > First of all 8 network cards were ordered with realtek 8139 chip (cheap > as possible, 8�/per card) to get those old computers on the network (the > older cards were not compatible and they were 10mbps). I used > http://www.rom-o-matic.net service to get the roms which I then wrote to > floppy disks.
If the floppies get old / don't work, you might try my solution of
booting lilo from the hard drive at
http://www.wizzy.org.za/article/articlestatic/14/1/2/
> Cdroms and harddrivers were disconnected.
>
> To connect to larger lan the administrator of it had to be contacted to
> get free ip space where the DHCP service of ltsp001 could function. Also
> roms had to be compiled to use different ports.
I agree with another poster - get your own LAN and another card in
the server.
> I used icewm as a window manager.
I use XFCE.
> Mozilla was a browser of my choice.
I use MozillaFirebird.
> OpenOffice.org (in finnish) for documents.
I use Abiword.
> Cons:
> -Have to buy new network cards and possibly floppy disk drivers
Boot from HD.
> -Old computers have batteries that have run out. It resets settings
> (somewhat good), but adds F1 or ESC button pressing at boot.
A real drag, especially if you have real bootroms, because I often
find the default CMOS settings (on newer computers) will not allow
network boot.
> Does anyone have any experiences about large LTSP installations (+20)?
> What are the bottle necks? How does the network keep up? Do you have
> gigabyte network between the switch and the server? How to increase
> security at desktop end?
I use two Thin Client servers, and NFS-mounted home dirs.
One setup I have uses GigE cards for the Thin Client servers - I
get some (too much) network 'freezing'. I do not really have
the budget to experiment, but I believe the problem is disk
bandwidth on the NFS server. I like Ken Yap's idea of browser
cache being set to zero - must try that.
> Especially how to change the settings for many accounts easily (OO.org
> settings require hand editing, a path or two needs to be set to user
> homedir)?
Using XFCE, if they have toolbar problems, I just delete their
~/.xfce directory.
I use the mk_homedir PAM module. This would allow you to delete the
home directory after logout - clean !
Then I set up /etc/skel carefully. Sometimes /etc/skel is not enough,
where config files must have the username patched in or something.
I create uppercase versions of the filenames in skel, and then run the
attached script (placed in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/* ) that looks
for these files and edits them appropriately on user login.
Might seem a little complicated, but I have several installations
and thousands of users.
/etc/skel has these files :-
skel/.bash_logout
skel/.bash_profile
skel/.bashrc
skel/.galeon/bookmarks.xbel
skel/.galeon/mozilla/galeon/PREFS.JS
skel/.gconf/apps/galeon/Advanced/Network/%GCONF.XML
skel/.gconf/apps/galeon/Browsing/General/%GCONF.XML
skel/.gnome2/gdm
skel/.mozilla/default/60et3lk5.slt/bookmarks.html
skel/.mozilla/default/60et3lk5.slt/PREFS.JS
skel/.netscape/PREFERENCES.JS
skel/.phoenix/default/m9p125rr.slt/PREFS.JS
Mostly this sets up a proxy, and the home page, for galeon/mozilla/firebird.
Cheers, Andy!
wizzy.sh
Description: Bourne shell script
