On Thu, 2004-11-11 at 15:54, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote:
> Hallo, Marvin
> 
> It depends how responsible system do You want to have. I'd assume 
> approx. double the users that Craige suggested, however I have no 
> direct  contact with such a large installation.

Well, this might be my first large installation on LTSP and that's why
I'm asking for tips and advise as I don't want to assume that is not
practically work in reality.

> It also very depends on some decisions, settings and tweaking. One big 
> decision is WM/DE. For example if U use IceWM, the number of running 
> users could be about double than with KDE or GNOME. Not allowing 
> background images could also significantly reduce network traffic. Even 
> KDE can be set to use less effects, shadings and so, and the 
> well-thought decision what effects are necesarry can also help a lot. 
> IceWM has one more strong advantage -it is very stable and almost 
> incorruptable. User is not able to break his settings. Settings are 
> quite easy to share between users, it's enough to save the default 
> settings to /etc/x11/icewm and all users will have them. The special 
> per-user settings can be saved to particular home directory to ./icewm 
> dir. If U want just desktop that just works and dosen't eat valuable 
> resources, than IceWM is good enough. I agree that hard-weighted 
> desktops are nicer, cooler,... but this depends on how much do You want 
> to spend on "coolness" and eye-candiness.
> There are also some nice themes for IceWM so that it dosen't look bad.

Yes, IceWM is good enough but I don't have a choice but to use either
KDE or Gnome for this project.

In connection with this, which of the two is much faster to use for this
kind of an LTSP setup?

> The key issue with network is that any graphics eats the most bandwidth 
> because it is transfered as uncompressed bitmap. Text goes with no 
> problem. Example: Average work in OOo may eats 30kilobyte per second 
> (mouse cursor motion, repainting the icons etc, some text changes on 
> screen..), but opening an image can temporarily lead to 1megabyte ps, 
> and webpage with running animation could easily permanently consume 
> several megabytes per second! So be the Web -if U'd filter flash 
> animations and set Mozilla to display animated gifs only once, it will 
> absolutely reduce as network traffic as well as CPU load (even ONE flash 
> eats LOTS of CPU in Mozilla). This is why I was talking about efects in 
> KDE (or other desktop) -not only they eat CPU, but if the button goes 
> smoothly translucent and changes colour etc, every frame of change goes 
> thru network as bitmap. If app window changes colour when You go with 
> mouse over, the whole frame is bitmapped and sent thru network. Do it 
> with 30 users and Your network will scream ;o)
> You said that the network is the thing You must treat carefully, so take 
> these things to decision. I strongly suggest You install some network 
> traffic monitor, even XOSVIEW can display network load if ran with -n (I 
> hope) parameter, and it shows memory and load info too. Run some apps, 
> labor with them on client and watch the results. It will be very 
> interesting for You and Your decisions will be much clearer. This is the 
> best thing I can suggest You.

As much as I would like to control the applications that will cause the
network hog, I don't have a choice but to install those applications
that we all know can really affect the performance of the LTSP network
like the flash plugin, JRE, etc.

> If U compile custom kernel of 2.6 series, it could also help the system. 
> Setting parameters such as SHMMAX to higher value could help share 
> libraries in memory so that they would be better shareable between user 
> sessions.

Thanks for this tip.  I should compile my own kernel for the LTSP thin
clients.

> I just say that even little tweaking and clever decisions could save 
> money on hardware :o)

You're right.  :)

My last question for this is, can VNC help the performance if combined
in an LTSP setup?  Any advice for this kind of setup?

Thanks again.

Marvin



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