Because when students log back in after a freeze, their desktop appears without the top and bottom panels and they can't do anything until I slay them.
On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 9:03 AM, David Van Assche <dvanassche@gmail.com> wrote:
How do u know it is not working? can u paste some data?
David Van Assche
On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 1:26 PM, Todd O'Bryan <toddobryan@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 5:05 AM, David Van Assche <dvanassche@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> I've taken a look into the email in question, and can answer some
>> questions. I in no way am affiliated with canonical, though I do work
>> within the ed/ubuntu community. Firstly, Scott mentions not using
>> 8.04, clearly you should upgrade as that will solve 50% of your
>> issues... the other issues are all valid, and I guess the problem is
>> one of communication between developers and end users. Lets address
>> the issues seperately:
>>
>> - The gnome lingering process problem
>>
>> Agreed.. this is a heavy issue that is a pain in the behind, but it is
>> not LTSP centric... the fault lies with gnome. Right now the
>> workaround is a watchdog script, which seems to work ok, but is by no
>> means a fix... This needs to be tackled from the gnome side... Right
>> now the solution is in monitoring and ending misbehaving processes
>> through the script or by hand via pkill -u or killall. It makes sense
>> to clean all processes at least 1 time per day... consider it
>> maintenance.
>
> I'm actually running the gnome-watchdog package that Philipp Hanselmann
> wrote. It's not working, he's never tested it on 8.04, so it's hardly his
> fault. I sent an email asking if I had to do something extra to make it
> start working and got no answer.
>
> Also, note that, useful as gnome-watchdog is, it's not in any of the
> official repos. Given that it's essential, someone official should have
> adopted it and pulled it into the repos.
>
> Todd
>
>
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09-10-2008, 01:44 PM
Gavin McCullagh
Is it just me, or is LTSP a mess?
Hi,
On Wed, 10 Sep 2008, Todd O'Bryan wrote:
> Because when students log back in after a freeze, their desktop appears
> without the top and bottom panels and they can't do anything until I slay
> them.
Could you give us the output of
ps aux |grep <username>
for that <username> before you slay them? If we need to repair watchdog,
that can possibly be done.
Gavin
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09-10-2008, 01:44 PM
Is it just me, or is LTSP a mess?
---- David Van Assche <dvanassche@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've taken a look into the email in question, and can answer some
> questions. I in no way am affiliated with canonical, though I do work
> within the ed/ubuntu community. Firstly, Scott mentions not using
> 8.04, clearly you should upgrade as that will solve 50% of your
> issues... the other issues are all valid, and I guess the problem is
> one of communication between developers and end users. Lets address
> the issues seperately:
>
> - The gnome lingering process problem
>
> Agreed.. this is a heavy issue that is a pain in the behind, but it is
> not LTSP centric... the fault lies with gnome. Right now the
> workaround is a watchdog script, which seems to work ok, but is by no
> means a fix... This needs to be tackled from the gnome side... Right
> now the solution is in monitoring and ending misbehaving processes
> through the script or by hand via pkill -u or killall. It makes sense
> to clean all processes at least 1 time per day... consider it
> maintenance.
>
> - tcm (thin client manager)
>
> Indeed this no longer exists, and I believe it has been discussed
> about here before on various occasions. Italc has replaced thin client
> manager as the software that should be run to control thin clients
> from a centralised location. The new documentation reflects this (new
> in intrepid ibex), and I agree it was confusing, but a quick jump to a
> channel of importance (#ltsp primarily, but also #edubuntu) will give
> you the answers you need. Or a search in google. To install it is
> apt-get install italc-client
>
Is it just the docs that have been fixed for 8.10? As far as I can tell italc was broken on 8.04 and I needed to remove it. This is something that should be backported to the Long Term Support version.
Thin Client Manager currently locks up on 8.04 as well.
> - port forwarding
>
> The reason this is not built in is because no one knows how the
> network structure looks like at a particular location. There could be
> many different setups, but the documentation tells you how to easily
> do this in the most common way (this has been in documentation for a
> while now):
>
Agreed. I have a separate IPcop box for content filtering, port forwarding, intrusion detection, etc.
> - lts.conf file
>
> This is where LTSP gets complex, and its the same across ALL
> distributions... If you don't know how to create a file, then it is
> not recommended you touch a lts.conf file. Increasingly, reliance on
> this file has been diminished to the point that in MOST setups the
> lts.conf file is not really required. But if it is, a quick read
> through the documentation will show you an example file and where it
> should go.
>
I've got a couple of 3 year old Dell workstations that need their video explicitly set in lts.conf
I have to set printer servers in lts.conf. I'm still using lts.conf to do my load balancing.
It would be great if I didn't have to edit this file, but I don't see it going away any time soon.
And the skeleton file that tells you to read the documentation points to a documentation file that doesn't exist. Instead you get to search through the ubuntu website to find the parameters and examples.
Luis
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09-10-2008, 02:09 PM
"Todd O'Bryan"
Is it just me, or is LTSP a mess?
On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 9:44 AM, Gavin McCullagh <gmccullagh@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
On Wed, 10 Sep 2008, Todd O'Bryan wrote:
> Because when students log back in after a freeze, their desktop appears
> without the top and bottom panels and they can't do anything until I slay
> them.
Could you give us the output of
* * * *ps aux |grep <username>
for that <username> before you slay them? *If we need to repair watchdog,
that can possibly be done.
Gavin
Here's the output after the freeze, but before the student restarted the terminal:
And here's the output after the student restarted the terminal, logged back in, and was stuck at the screen with the desktop showing, but no top and bottom panels.
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09-10-2008, 02:11 PM
"David Van Assche"
Is it just me, or is LTSP a mess?
>>
>> - tcm (thin client manager)
>>
>> Indeed this no longer exists, and I believe it has been discussed
>> about here before on various occasions. Italc has replaced thin client
>> manager as the software that should be run to control thin clients
>> from a centralised location. The new documentation reflects this (new
>> in intrepid ibex), and I agree it was confusing, but a quick jump to a
>> channel of importance (#ltsp primarily, but also #edubuntu) will give
>> you the answers you need. Or a search in google. To install it is
>> apt-get install italc-client
>>
>
> Is it just the docs that have been fixed for 8.10? As far as I can tell italc was broken on 8.04 and I needed to remove it. This is something that should be backported to the Long Term Support version.
> Thin Client Manager currently locks up on 8.04 as well.
>
As far as I have been able to tell, italc works great on 8.04+ (make
sure you have an up to date version of italc installed, and if it is
causing problems for you, let us know what they are and we can help.)
I personally use italc on 8.04 without issues... there are some tricks
though, like pointing to the clients u want via their server ip (as
mentioned in an email I sent a while back to the list):
The way to use italc with thin clients is adding 127.0.0.1 or localhost and
the portnumber 10000+last byte of IP. For example... the client IP I want to
connect to is:
192.168.0.15, then connecting to this user from the master Italc interface
would be:
localhost:10015
Some users have mentioned it requires the actual IP of the server (ie.
192.168.0.254)
TCM is no longer supported... don't use it...
I'm sure there are other fixes along with documentation now being up
to date, but most of the changes are LTSP centric (ie, people from
different distros work together and then port these ltsp changes to
all new distros.) In essence LTSP on Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian and Gentoo
and (though a little different, still based on the same work) Suse all
work the same because its the same code under the hood.
Whatever changes have been made to other items (gnome, X, open office,
firefox, etc) are related to the distribution you are using... and
whatever changes have happened to that distro.
>
>> - port forwarding
>>
>> The reason this is not built in is because no one knows how the
>> network structure looks like at a particular location. There could be
>> many different setups, but the documentation tells you how to easily
>> do this in the most common way (this has been in documentation for a
>> while now):
>>
>
> Agreed. I have a separate IPcop box for content filtering, port forwarding, intrusion detection, etc.
>
>> - lts.conf file
>>
>> This is where LTSP gets complex, and its the same across ALL
>> distributions... If you don't know how to create a file, then it is
>> not recommended you touch a lts.conf file. Increasingly, reliance on
>> this file has been diminished to the point that in MOST setups the
>> lts.conf file is not really required. But if it is, a quick read
>> through the documentation will show you an example file and where it
>> should go.
>>
>
> I've got a couple of 3 year old Dell workstations that need their video explicitly set in lts.conf
> I have to set printer servers in lts.conf. I'm still using lts.conf to do my load balancing.
> It would be great if I didn't have to edit this file, but I don't see it going away any time soon.
>
> And the skeleton file that tells you to read the documentation points to a documentation file that doesn't exist. Instead you get to search through the ubuntu website to find the parameters and examples.
For any fine tuning, lts.conf is indeed the place to do that, and like
you say, won't be going away any time soon, but has been automated to
the maximum extent possible. video _should_ work an most thin clients
out of the box, if it doesn't let us know the video card in question
so we can take a look.
The documentation now presents all the possible values that can be put
in lts.conf, if you find there are items required, let us know and
we'll add them...
Can u let us know what non existent file its pointing to, so we can fix that?
Kind Regards,
David Van Assche
>
> Luis
>
>
>
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09-10-2008, 03:04 PM
Asmo Koskinen
Is it just me, or is LTSP a mess?
Asmo Koskinen kirjoitti:
> 2 servers, both have 2 x Dual Core Xeon and 6G memory. LAN is fast. We
> have 113 thin clients, HP t5125/5135.
I installed today after school Cacti on the both servers. I put graphs
online friday. Maybe graphs tell us something. I put log files online, too.
Best Regards Asmo Koskinen.
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09-10-2008, 03:58 PM
"R. Scott Belford"
Is it just me, or is LTSP a mess?
On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 11:05 PM, David Van Assche <dvanassche@gmail.com> wrote:
I've taken a look into the email in question, and can answer some
questions. I in no way am affiliated with canonical, though I do work
within the ed/ubuntu community. Firstly, Scott mentions not using
8.04, clearly you should upgrade as that will solve 50% of your
issues... the other issues are all valid, and I guess the problem is
one of communication between developers and end users. Lets address
the issues seperately:
Actually, David, I have tested 8.04 in my labs, have installed it several times, but do not dare deploy it in a production environment.* 7.10 was too detrimental, and the Canonical/Edu/Ubu cultures are still maturing to the point that user issues on an official mailing list find a path upstream to real fixes.*
*
- The gnome lingering process problem
Agreed.. this is a heavy issue that is a pain in the behind, but it is
not LTSP centric... the fault lies with gnome. Right now the
workaround is a watchdog script, which seems to work ok, but is by no
means a fix... This needs to be tackled from the gnome side... Right
now the solution is in monitoring and ending misbehaving processes
through the script or by hand via pkill -u or killall. It makes sense
to clean all processes at least 1 time per day... consider it
maintenance.
The issue never existed in any K12LTSP or Skolelinux releases.* What did they do differently?* Why are they not blaming Gnome?* Do you truly think that telling a teacher just to run pkill or killall will help advance the adoption of FOSS in schools?* Is this the final product that Edubuntu seeks?* Are you familiar with the one-hour per week of Admin time that is fundamental to the Skolelinux architecture?
- tcm (thin client manager)
Indeed this no longer exists, and I believe it has been discussed
about here before on various occasions. Italc has replaced thin client
manager as the software that should be run to control thin clients
from a centralised location. The new documentation reflects this (new
in intrepid ibex), and I agree it was confusing, but a quick jump to a
channel of importance (#ltsp primarily, but also #edubuntu) will give
you the answers you need. Or a search in google. To install it is
apt-get install italc-client
Intrepid documentation addresses this, or Feisty/Hardy documentation address this?* Why should a first-time adopter go to IRC or anywhere other than Edubuntu documentation to solve this?* What is the goal of this project - to appeal to advanced users or to appeal to educators?
*
- port forwarding
The reason this is not built in is because no one knows how the
network structure looks like at a particular location. There could be
many different setups, but the documentation tells you how to easily
do this in the most common way (this has been in documentation for a
while now):
The issue is that the standard method for activating port forwarding
was broken in Feisty.* You could not run echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward and have it work.* It works fine in Debian.* The issue was not that
port forwarding was off by default.* It is off by default in Debian.*
The documentation had several, contradicting fixes, for a while now.
*
Setting network forwarding
Primary server will act as an network gateway for other servers. With
this configuration, other workstations will be able to
access the network behind the primary server. Here is an example of
script that setup the network forwarding. We put it in
/etc/network/if-up.d/forward.sh, and make it executable.
This is or is not included in Hardy?* If one wishes to share the WAN on a LAN with Edubuntu, they also had to hack the dhcpd.conf file to set the gateway to be the same IP address as the Edubuntu server.* You don't seem to mention this below.* Have you shared your WAN in a Feisty environment with computers other than thin-clients before?
*The script
will run at each network start. In this example, the primary
server private IP is 192.168.0.1. It must be adapted for the IP address used.
iptables -A FORWARD -j ACCEPT -i $LAN_NIC -s $LAN_IP_NET
iptables -A FORWARD -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
Is all of this above your fix for forwarding?* There is neater documentation for this.
- speaking to canonical employee
Well, you may have spoken to canonical employees, but just like in any
larger company, unless you talk to the ones involved in the area you
are asking about, you'll probably get blank stares or answers that
don't fit. You did not speak to any educational or ltsp canonical
developer. I guarantee that if you search a little you'll quickly find
out who they are. If you are serious about your issues and concerns,
then why not try to contact one of these developers directly?
Do you know who I spoke with, David?* They knew Richard and Ollie.* Did you notice in my commentary about speaking with them that it was their suggestion that I blog or write about my issues on the mailing list?* I am quite serious about my issues and concerns, I have used the official Edubuntu mailing list to address them, I have addressed them with executives who purportedly have relationships with Mr. Shuttleworth, and I have addressed the education team that sometimes speaks up on this mailing list.
To date the meetings I set up for the Canonical executives interested in selling into Hawaii's government and DOE are still waiting for follow-up from Canonical.
- lts.conf file
This is where LTSP gets complex, and its the same across ALL
distributions...
This is absurd, David.* LTS.CONF IS NOT THE SAME ACROSS ALL DISTRIBUTIONS.* PERIOD.
Have you seen the lts.conf file that came from the Jim McQuillan/Eric Harrison combo with the K12LTSP?* I suppose not based on your comment.* Have you seen the lts.conf file in Skolelinux?* Have you seen the different LTS.CONF files shared by others on this list?
LTS.CONF is where LTSP gets less complex and more deployable if you have a good team upstream.
*
If you don't know how to create a file, then it is
not recommended you touch a lts.conf file. Increasingly, reliance on
this file has been diminished to the point that in MOST setups the
lts.conf file is not really required. But if it is, a quick read
through the documentation will show you an example file and where it
should go.
Look, the fact of the matter is that the only way to support the generations of hardware that the Edubuntu documentation said was supported was to tweak LTS.CONF.* Period.*
- upgrading from earlier versions
Finally, I would recommend against upgrading, but instead noting the
setup you have and migrating that to a new already working ltsp setup.
If you have ubuntu 7.10, then installing a new 8.04 from the alternate
cd is the best practice that will cause the least pain... and if you
have problems... go to the #ltsp channel, where you will probably get
an answer to any question within minutes. oh, and for the record...
the devs do read this list...
I find it hard to believe that any devs with any power or will to improve Edu/Ubu Buntu actually read this list and take the time to test fixes.* What is your relationship with Canonical and your depth of experience setting up, deploying, supporting, and advocting on behalf of Thin Client setups, David?
*
Kind Regards,
David Van Assche
Aloha
--scott
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09-10-2008, 04:09 PM
Asmo Koskinen
Is it just me, or is LTSP a mess?
Asmo Koskinen kirjoitti:
> I installed today after school Cacti on the both servers. I put graphs
> online friday. Maybe graphs tell us something. I put log files online, too.
I will later tonight install darkstat for network traffic on both
servers for two days.
If there is something more that I should do (about statics) for helping
developers and other users, let me know.
Remember - I'm no developer and this is not my day job - just try to
help my neighbor.
Best Regards Asmo Koskinen.
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09-10-2008, 04:37 PM
"Jordan Mantha"
Is it just me, or is LTSP a mess?
On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 8:58 AM, R. Scott Belford <scott@hosef.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 11:05 PM, David Van Assche <dvanassche@gmail.com>
> wrote:
<snip>
> I find it hard to believe that any devs with any power or will to improve
> Edu/Ubu Buntu actually read this list and take the time to test fixes. What
> is your relationship with Canonical and your depth of experience setting up,
> deploying, supporting, and advocting on behalf of Thin Client setups, David?
I've been reading this thread carefully and really thinking hard about
the overall issues here. I can't talk specifically about LTSP because
I don't use it and I'm not in a position of expertise there. I am
however, and Edubuntu and Ubuntu developer and am very much interested
in making both work for educators, students, and educational
institutions. There are a lot of people using Edubuntu successfully,
but I personally take user complaints very seriously.
I've been involved with the Ubuntu community and distro development
for 3 years now and we've seen our share of issues. I think we need to
get this thread steered a bit back on course towards constructive
dialog about problems people are facing and possible solutions we can
try to implement. We all need to vent sometimes, but let's try to keep
it civil and constructive as much ass possible.
I get the impression at times that people think there are a myriad of
people paid to work on these issues. The reality is that there has
only ever been 1 person paid to work on Edubuntu/LTSP, and in fact
that person has been moved to another project for his paid time and is
now volunteering like the rest of us to work on Edubuntu. We had a
period of time where the primary developers of Edubuntu were basically
inactive due to real life situations. I know I personally feel like
I've let the community down by not being around for Hardy, but I have
real life obligations I can't just shirk to work on software. These
are the times when we need people from the user community to step up
and maybe try to contribute a bit here and there. I'm somewhat
frantically trying to get Intrepid ready for release and Scott
Balneaves sounds like he's able to help out more with LTSP bugs. We're
planning on having an LTSP Bug Day next week (looks like Wednesday) in
#edubuntu and could use all the help we can get (testing, triage,
patches, etc.).
I usually don't like talking about development issues on the -users
list as I don't want to burden users with these issues, but I think
perhaps it's useful for people to see. Here are the things I'm getting
from the thread so far (please correct/add):
1) lack of feedback from development team on "pain points"
2) lack of vision/purpose/goals for Edubuntu
3) trend towards "fix via documentation" rather than fixing code to
just "do the right thing"
4) fixes not being backported to the stable release
I think we can work on all of these areas, but of course we need help.
We need help testing, help writing documentation, help triaging bugs,
help in terms of advice from educators. I firmly believe that Edubuntu
has huge potential to affect the lives of children and students around
the world, but it doesn't happen on it's own. People have to step up
to contribute to turn that potential into reality. I'm willing to help
as much as I'm able to train people, to advise and mentor
contributors, and to work towards making Edubuntu the best educational
distro we can. I, and the rest of the current team, can't do it alone
so please do hop on #edubuntu on irc.freenode.net or send an email to
edubuntu-devel introducing yourself.
-Jordan
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09-10-2008, 04:37 PM
"Jordan Mantha"
Is it just me, or is LTSP a mess?
On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 8:58 AM, R. Scott Belford <scott@hosef.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 11:05 PM, David Van Assche <dvanassche@gmail.com>
> wrote:
<snip>
> I find it hard to believe that any devs with any power or will to improve
> Edu/Ubu Buntu actually read this list and take the time to test fixes. What
> is your relationship with Canonical and your depth of experience setting up,
> deploying, supporting, and advocting on behalf of Thin Client setups, David?
I've been reading this thread carefully and really thinking hard about
the overall issues here. I can't talk specifically about LTSP because
I don't use it and I'm not in a position of expertise there. I am
however, and Edubuntu and Ubuntu developer and am very much interested
in making both work for educators, students, and educational
institutions. There are a lot of people using Edubuntu successfully,
but I personally take user complaints very seriously.
I've been involved with the Ubuntu community and distro development
for 3 years now and we've seen our share of issues. I think we need to
get this thread steered a bit back on course towards constructive
dialog about problems people are facing and possible solutions we can
try to implement. We all need to vent sometimes, but let's try to keep
it civil and constructive as much ass possible.
I get the impression at times that people think there are a myriad of
people paid to work on these issues. The reality is that there has
only ever been 1 person paid to work on Edubuntu/LTSP, and in fact
that person has been moved to another project for his paid time and is
now volunteering like the rest of us to work on Edubuntu. We had a
period of time where the primary developers of Edubuntu were basically
inactive due to real life situations. I know I personally feel like
I've let the community down by not being around for Hardy, but I have
real life obligations I can't just shirk to work on software. These
are the times when we need people from the user community to step up
and maybe try to contribute a bit here and there. I'm somewhat
frantically trying to get Intrepid ready for release and Scott
Balneaves sounds like he's able to help out more with LTSP bugs. We're
planning on having an LTSP Bug Day next week (looks like Wednesday) in
#edubuntu and could use all the help we can get (testing, triage,
patches, etc.).
I usually don't like talking about development issues on the -users
list as I don't want to burden users with these issues, but I think
perhaps it's useful for people to see. Here are the things I'm getting
from the thread so far (please correct/add):
1) lack of feedback from development team on "pain points"
2) lack of vision/purpose/goals for Edubuntu
3) trend towards "fix via documentation" rather than fixing code to
just "do the right thing"
4) fixes not being backported to the stable release
I think we can work on all of these areas, but of course we need help.
We need help testing, help writing documentation, help triaging bugs,
help in terms of advice from educators. I firmly believe that Edubuntu
has huge potential to affect the lives of children and students around
the world, but it doesn't happen on it's own. People have to step up
to contribute to turn that potential into reality. I'm willing to help
as much as I'm able to train people, to advise and mentor
contributors, and to work towards making Edubuntu the best educational
distro we can. I, and the rest of the current team, can't do it alone
so please do hop on #edubuntu on irc.freenode.net or send an email to
edubuntu-devel introducing yourself.
-Jordan
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Is it just me, or is LTSP a mess?
