On Mon, 15 Dec 2003, Pradeep Bhomia wrote: > Dear Jim, > > I have been following up with your progress of LTSP 4 recently. I am happy > that LTSP 4 will be released soon. More that that it is good to hear that you > have also added support for local app. This was my main requirement at the > site where my LTSP is implemented. As I have discussed with you earlier > regarding local app, can you guide me through my querries: > > 1). You have mentioned that porting any application as local application > will be easy with LTSP4. I will be using Netscape 7 (or Mozilla Firebird) as > local app for my clients. What will be the procedure for porting such an > application. Whether I will have to get the source of Netscape 7 and compile > it for LTSP4 or can I use the binary of Netscape 7 and install it in the > LTSP4 directory.
Well, it will make it "possible" to build local apps. "easy" is a relative term that really depends on your skill level. I have successfully run Mozilla Firebird 0.7 as a local app. It isn't yet easy, as there are a whole bunch of libraries needed, and I just started copying them from another machine. For real support, we need to build those libraries, to have them ready to run the browser. In the end, we "should" be able to take a standard Mozilla binary package and install it, without resorting to building from source. But, as we move along, we'll see just how well that works. > > 2). I have been trying to install the LTSP4 recently. Can you tell me the > link from where I can download the local app support so that I can check it > out. It's not available in binary form yet. Only from the cvs repository. You'll have to wait until Wednesday (Dec 17th) to get the binary packages. > > 3). What should be the configuration of my server for nearly 150 clients. > Can you help me out in this with regard to LTSP4. Please note that the > purpose of setting up LTSP is to provide only browsing facility to my clients > and let them save downloaded data on the LTSP server. The browser that the > clients will be running the application locally. That still depends on what other software you'll be running. Which window manager ? KDE and Gnome will require more server power than Icewm or other lightweight window managers. For 150 thin clients, I'd still go as big as you can, with lots of ram. Keep in mind that running apps locally will require lots of network bandwidth to get the app launched. Mozilla and its libraries is several megabytes of stuff to send down to the workstation. 150 users doing that will use an awful lot of bandwidth on startup. Once it is running, it shouldn't require too much bandwidth. Of course that depends on the types of websites they are viewing. For 150 thin clients, I'd suggest having a Gigabyte connection between the server and the switch. 100mbit from the switch out to the workstations should be fine though. Also, keep in mind that if you are running the applications locally, that places more load on each workstation. So, you need to remember that how big your individual workstations should be. I ran Firebird AND the flash plug-in on a 300mhz MediaGX machine with 64mb of ram. The performance wasn't all that great. After running for about 30 minutes, I checked the memory usage, and there's only about 1.8mb of free ram available. If mozilla allocates much more, the workstation will run out of ram. This requires either more ram, or some swap. NFS-swap is possible, but not too good for network performance. Adding a harddisk is possible, but one of the points of thin clients is to remove all moving parts. I haven't tried it yet, but I would expect the performance on a 533Mhz workstation with 128mb of ram to be MUCH better. I hope that helps, Jim McQuillan [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Thanks a lot. > > > Pradeep Bhomia > ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials. Become an expert in LINUX or just sharpen your skills. Sign up for IBM's Free Linux Tutorials. Learn everything from the bash shell to sys admin. Click now! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1278&alloc_id=3371&op=click _____________________________________________________________________ Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.freenode.net
