ubuntu 10.04: problems with thin clients hanging on boot

09-14-2011, 02:53 PM

Are your networks 100 megabit or gigabit? *All of my troubles went away when I installed gig switches. *I had similar troubles with slower switches.
Jim
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09-14-2011, 07:23 PM

Hi Dave,

I do have a customized lts.conf

Here it is the default section for reference, I also have per client
settings for printing and shutdown

[Default]
LDM_DIRECTX=True
LOCAL_APPS=True
LOCAL_APPS_MENU = True
LOCAL_APPS_MENU_ITEMS = firefox,google-chrome
LOCALDEV = True
SEARCH_DOMAIN = vanguard
DNS_SERVER = 10.114.5.50
cups_server = 10.110.0.105
TIMESERVER = 10.114.5.50
#SHUTDOWN_TIME = "18:59:30"
LDM_LIMIT_ONE_SESSION = True

# section name per man page for lts.conf
[vhs_lib]
LDM_PRINTER_DEFAULT=VHS-Lib-Printer
LDM_PRINTER_LIST=VHS-Lib-Printer
SHUTDOWN_TIME = "18:59:30"

Thanks for your ideas!

John

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 6:40 PM, David Hopkins <dahopkins429@gmail.com> wrote:
> Are all the thin clients the same hardware? Do you have a* custom lts.conf
> specified?* I've had clients hang due to issues with some modules I was
> loading (glx).
>
> Sincerely,
> Dave Hopkins
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 9:02 PM, john <lists.john@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I have a problem that has persisted since I rolled out Ubuntu 10.04
>> with LTSP. In any given lab of 30 clients between 1 and 5 will hang
>> after they finish downloading the pxe image and start booting ubuntu.
>> *The little dots that show ubuntu is loading will continue forever.
>>
>> A bit of googling showed me that there had been a bug filed against
>> the nbd server that sounded like the problem I was having.
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ltsp/+bug/589034
>>
>> I downloaded the updated ltsp_nbd and followed the steps to disable
>> the nbd_proxy but my problem wasn't fixed
>>
>> I also tried telling nbd to sleep for 5 seconds before continuing as
>> method outlined here
>> http://www.rickogden.com/2010/06/ltsp-part-2-configuration/
>>
>> I haven't enabled NBD in my lts.conf file so maybe I am barking up the
>> wrong tree here. Can anyone give me some guidance?
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> John
>>
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09-14-2011, 07:32 PM

Hi Jim,

Some of my cable spans are 100 mb and there does seem to be a
correlation between distance from the server and the amount of
stations that hang. *Thinking out loud* I wonder if there is some work
around? Is this a race condition of some sort? If so I wonder if some
variation on the nbd_server sleep method above might help. I guess
I'll try remove the "quiet" option on client boot and bump the wait to
10 seconds and see if I can gain any more insight.

John

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 7:53 AM, Jim Christiansen
<jim.c.christiansen@gmail.com> wrote:
> Are your networks 100 megabit or gigabit? *All of my troubles went away when
> I installed gig switches. *I had similar troubles with slower switches.
> Jim
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09-14-2011, 07:51 PM

Hi,

On Wed, 14 Sep 2011, john wrote:

> Some of my cable spans are 100 mb and there does seem to be a
> correlation between distance from the server and the amount of
> stations that hang. *Thinking out loud* I wonder if there is some work
> around? Is this a race condition of some sort? If so I wonder if some
> variation on the nbd_server sleep method above might help. I guess
> I'll try remove the "quiet" option on client boot and bump the wait to
> 10 seconds and see if I can gain any more insight.

It would be worth checking if they are autonegotiating at 100Mbit Full
Duplex (or better). If that's failing and you're getting 10Mbit/sec or
half duplex, you'll be in trouble.

Gavin

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09-14-2011, 08:18 PM

Thanks Gavin,

I'll double check.

john

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 12:51 PM, Gavin McCullagh <gmccullagh@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Wed, 14 Sep 2011, john wrote:
>
>> Some of my cable spans are 100 mb and there does seem to be a
>> correlation between distance from the server and the amount of
>> stations that hang. *Thinking out loud* I wonder if there is some work
>> around? Is this a race condition of some sort? If so I wonder if some
>> variation on the nbd_server sleep method above might help. I guess
>> I'll try remove the "quiet" option on client boot and bump the wait to
>> 10 seconds and see if I can gain any more insight.
>
> It would be worth checking if they are autonegotiating at 100Mbit Full
> Duplex (or better). *If that's failing and you're getting 10Mbit/sec or
> half duplex, you'll be in trouble.
>
> Gavin
>
>
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09-14-2011, 08:25 PM

Hi John,
We hit this in a big way when we first upgraded to 10.04. *The 2 things that fixed it for us were disabling*nbd_proxy in the images (make sure you run*update-initramfs within the chroot of the image, not on the server) and then making sure we were gig end to end on all our connections. *

Now they boot*consistently...Steve

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 6:02 PM, john <lists.john@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all,

I have a problem that has persisted since I rolled out Ubuntu 10.04

with LTSP. In any given lab of 30 clients between 1 and 5 will hang

after they finish downloading the pxe image and start booting ubuntu.

*The little dots that show ubuntu is loading will continue forever.

A bit of googling showed me that there had been a bug filed against

the nbd server that sounded like the problem I was having.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ltsp/+bug/589034

I downloaded the updated ltsp_nbd and followed the steps to disable

the nbd_proxy but my problem wasn't fixed

I also tried telling nbd to sleep for 5 seconds before continuing as

method outlined here

http://www.rickogden.com/2010/06/ltsp-part-2-configuration/

I haven't enabled NBD in my lts.conf file so maybe I am barking up the

wrong tree here. Can anyone give me some guidance?

Thanks!

John

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09-15-2011, 01:27 AM

Thanks for that email John. I think this is the same problem I was having.
-peter

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 9:40 PM, David Hopkins <dahopkins429@gmail.com> wrote:

Are all the thin clients the same hardware? Do you have a* custom
lts.conf specified?* I've had clients hang due to issues with some
modules I was loading (glx).

Sincerely,
Dave Hopkins

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 9:02 PM, john <lists.john@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all,

I have a problem that has persisted since I rolled out Ubuntu 10.04

with LTSP. In any given lab of 30 clients between 1 and 5 will hang

after they finish downloading the pxe image and start booting ubuntu.

*The little dots that show ubuntu is loading will continue forever.

A bit of googling showed me that there had been a bug filed against

the nbd server that sounded like the problem I was having.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ltsp/+bug/589034

I downloaded the updated ltsp_nbd and followed the steps to disable

the nbd_proxy but my problem wasn't fixed

I also tried telling nbd to sleep for 5 seconds before continuing as

method outlined here

http://www.rickogden.com/2010/06/ltsp-part-2-configuration/

I haven't enabled NBD in my lts.conf file so maybe I am barking up the

wrong tree here. Can anyone give me some guidance?

Thanks!

John

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09-15-2011, 03:04 AM

Is it standard practice to name your clients by MAC address in the lts.conf file?* I heard it speeds things up.

For example at the bottom of my lts.conf file I've got all clients named.* Here are a few lines...

[00:02:A5:8F:6D

4]

HOSTNAME=g-1a

[00:02:A5:90:59:98]

HOSTNAME=g-1b

[00:02:A5:90:56:FB]

HOSTNAME=g-2a

David G

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 8:27 PM, Peter k <peter@beetlebolt.com> wrote:

Thanks for that email John. I think this is the same problem I was having.
-peter

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 9:40 PM, David Hopkins <dahopkins429@gmail.com> wrote:

Are all the thin clients the same hardware? Do you have a* custom
lts.conf specified?* I've had clients hang due to issues with some
modules I was loading (glx).

Sincerely,
Dave Hopkins

On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 9:02 PM, john <lists.john@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all,

I have a problem that has persisted since I rolled out Ubuntu 10.04

with LTSP. In any given lab of 30 clients between 1 and 5 will hang

after they finish downloading the pxe image and start booting ubuntu.

*The little dots that show ubuntu is loading will continue forever.

A bit of googling showed me that there had been a bug filed against

the nbd server that sounded like the problem I was having.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ltsp/+bug/589034

I downloaded the updated ltsp_nbd and followed the steps to disable

the nbd_proxy but my problem wasn't fixed

I also tried telling nbd to sleep for 5 seconds before continuing as

method outlined here

http://www.rickogden.com/2010/06/ltsp-part-2-configuration/

I haven't enabled NBD in my lts.conf file so maybe I am barking up the

wrong tree here. Can anyone give me some guidance?

Thanks!

John

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09-15-2011, 09:38 PM

Hi David,

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 8:04 PM, David Groos <djgroos@gmail.com> wrote:
> Is it standard practice to name your clients by MAC address in the lts.conf
> file?* I heard it speeds things up.

I don't see the "HOSTNAME" directive in the lts.conf man pages. Are
there "hidden lts.conf options?"

Also I've never been clear on how to give ltsp clients hostnames. We use
a Windows DHCP server and let the clients grab whatever address they
can. How do you set hostnames for TC's?

Thanks!

John

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09-15-2011, 09:48 PM

Hi all,

To reply to myself it seems like these options either aren't
documented in lts.conf man pages that ship with Ubuntu 10.04 or aren't
available. I see that the Hostname option is
documented here:

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/natty/man5/lts.conf.5.html

I think I'll give it a shot and see if the options available under Lucid.

I sort of wonder if running Ubuntu LTS for LTSP is a bad idea. There
is always some bug that we have to live with or work around that's
been fixed in more recent versions that won't be backported. Of course
we REALLY don't want to go to gnome3. sigh.

John

On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 2:38 PM, john <lists.john@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi David,
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 8:04 PM, David Groos <djgroos@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Is it standard practice to name your clients by MAC address in the lts.conf
>> file?* I heard it speeds things up.
>
> I don't see the "HOSTNAME" directive in the lts.conf man pages. Are
> there "hidden lts.conf options?"
>
> Also I've never been clear on how to give ltsp clients hostnames. We use
> a Windows DHCP server and let the clients grab whatever address they
> can. How do you set hostnames for TC's?
>
> Thanks!
>
> John
>
>
>>
>>
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