problems with graphics cards

[David Van Assche]

On Dec 13, 2007 7:06 PM, R. Scott Belford <scott at hosef.org> wrote:

> David Van Assche wrote:
> > I've been running 7.10 Gutsy on 60 computers with a powerful 64 bit
> > server running on 6 Gigs of Ram (surprisingly little RAM is used) for a
> > good 3 months now. I've read the reports of 7.10 being a failure and I
> > have to disagree on most accounts. If you don't modify too much and you
> > know what you are doing, things work wonderfully,
>
> I've read a few of the comments about how it works fine and you must be
> a ween if it doesn't work for you.  I'll make sure to pass this feedback
> on to the non-technical teachers in need of affordable technology and a
> helpful community that understands their skill and time limits.
>

by no means did I mean to sound like a snob, but I let me explain the main
reason I said I disagree with what was said:

a fresh install of edubuntu on an average server with a set of average
clients does indeed work out of the box. with no additional tinkering u
actually have a usable environment, with internet on thin clients, with
sound, and (sometimes) with usb support on the thin clients.

A default install of windows 2003 would be far more problematic to get
working out of the box on terminal clients, believe me.

>
> Just out of curiousity, David, how would the average teacher, you know,
> the ones that we want to adopt Edubuntu but have fewer than a few hours
> each week to admin, how would they have handled this issue


I would warn them that they should get support from canonical:
http://www.canonical.com/services/support

1 year of support will cost them 1200 dollars for support  every hour  of
the working day. That is damn good, if not unparalleled.

>
>
> > This is very cool, definetly useful for any real world scenario. Its a
> > constant daily task to kill processes and/or show teachers and
> > students how to do this themselves... Its very common for firefox not
> > to start due to the 'you are already running another session of
> > firefox' message. This will seriously reduce administration times...
> > good work... just one question... will it work on Gutsy ?
>
> This was your own statement.  Until I found watchdog and installed it
> for one of the teachers I help, his lab was failing as the day
> progressed.  This was quite a modification that required you to know
> what you are doing.


Since watchdog is 32 bit, I cannot use it, I installed webmin, and check the
processes that are eating up memory and cpu time, once day, kill the
unnecessary ones, and that leaves the system stable with upto 60 concurrent
users. Ive shown this process to the school director in case Im not there,
and he seems to be able handle that allright.

>
> and this
>
> > I've just noticed sound is not working on my clients... It was working
> fine under feisty.... what can I do to get it back?
>
> The average teacher who upgrades from 7.04 to 7.10 will be able to
> budget how much time to researching and solving this while wondering why
> they have *more* work after upgrading?


Agreed. Upgrading doesnt work, didn't work, and I lost countless hours on
that process. I would say do NOT upgrade a production server if you're not
ready to problem solve the next couple of days away on silly problems.

>
>
> and this
>
>  > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ThinClientHowtoNAT
>
> You, like myself and others, have been pointing people to a wiki that
> doesn't work after reboot.
>
> Remember though, that this is for NON thin clients on the same network...
this is not out of the box functionality... it should be included by the
devs by default, but they do not claim to have this working in their release
notes, as far as I have seen.


>
> and this
>
> > I'm assuming something must have changed in Gutsy as to how users are
> > detected, but its a shame because my teachers started using this a lot
> > and were praising it to high heaven. Now we're a bit stuck using tcm,
> > which leaves a lot to be desired.
> >
> > Any help to get it to work would be much appreciated.
>
> You, like many, really enjoyed the functionality of TCM and Teachertool.
>  Now TCM doesn't work with Gutsy, and you have to hack away at TT.
>

Yes, admining the thin clients isnt too easy with the TCM, but the only
thing that does not work is the thin client display sharing... which to me
is a advanced feature... its a wishlist thing for me... but you can use the
TCM to kill clients, see what processes are running, etc. TT is better but
TCM does the same job (minus the sharing which I would love for my class)

>
> The words that stand out to me are "my teachers" which suggests that you
> are support, you are not the average teacher surviving without David
> there to support her.  You actually do know what you are doing, and the
> school is blessed to have you around.  If Edubuntu is going to be Linux
>

Yes, the previous teacher left the school because they could not get their
head around Linux, but they didnt really try or give it a chance either. You
obviously need support of some sort or another in a larger school facility.
There is no way that a networked setup of 30 plus computers with a server
and central logins is going to work by itself, no matter what operating
system you stick on it. My belief is that windows would cause far more
problems on the same hardware Im using than the current set of problems that
have occured. The flaw in thinking here is that edubuntu should work without
any support. That is just crazy... teachers and students working the server
to the max as they do are not predictable, and without support by a
knowledgable admin, or Ubuntu Canonical itself, they better stick to a non
networked environment with individual computers running whatever they want
(in fact, before working at the school fulltime, I had that setup in their
primary facility, edubuntu running as fat clients without a server, and I
had to go in and take a look maybe 3 or 4 times a year to resolve normal
admin issues for 10 computers.


> for Human Beings (who know what they are doing), then we should ignore
> me as flamebait and go about patting ourselves on the backs for doing a
> great job.  Meanwhile, on the Edubuntu developers mailing list, some guy
> from Augusta has stumbled on the site and asked a question to the wrong
> forum about installation issues.  I wonder what the ripple effect of
> Edubuntu adoption will be for his social network when he has to escalate
> his skillset to even become a user.
>
> This is by no means to challenge you, at all, David.  I just wanted to
> use your experiences to observe that we, as early adopters who know what
> we are doing, are not the teachers who need this software.  Some
> teachers don't even know they need it, and they certainly wouldn't be
> able to come to a list like this and know how to ask for help much less
> how to implement it.
>

Many of my mails to the list do indeed ask questions, but that is because I
am a tinkerer by nature, and certainly using edubuntu in a non-standard
way... I have changed the default setup considerably, so issues like sound,
usb, login, chroot environment etc are bound to pop up.

I agree that a single teacher with little linux experience would be crazy to
adopt edubuntu in a  real world environment without support... but this is
true of any OS, not just ubuntu, and of any distribution, not just gutsy.

If you want an absolutely flawless experince, get support, at 1200 dollars a
year that is not too bad...


>
> --scott
>
> >    Sadly, the only solution I see is making special chroots for all the
> > exceptions to the rule (auto-detection of the graphics card details)
>
> let's hope that no teacher ever has to do that. :-)
>


Yeah the graphics card thing is annoying... The idea that in a thin client
environment where u can have so many different client setups to autodetect
graphics cards without being able to reconfigure that part is crazy... this
was a step backwards, I hope a dev hears me :-)


David
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