A small LTSP network setup

Tue Jun 12 03:52:21 UTC 2012

Hi David,

Thank you for your response and thank you for pointing out Webmin. No I 
don't have any LDAP setup currently. Perhaps i can achieve what i want 
(an easy web interface for user account administration for the 
non-technical staff) using Webmin???  If so, then there is no need for 
any LDAP. It is not possible to estimate the number of users right now, 
but i suspect the lab will be there to use for a good number of this 
organizations users, they run afternoon classes for children and i am 
guessing there may be tens of potential users each requiring a user account.

I have been promised used desktop computers being donated by a school 
and i don't have their full specs right now. But i am told they would at 
least be P4 or better. Sorry about the mixup of the terminology, by fat 
client i was referring to regular desktop computers with a local hard 
drive. But whether they would host the entire OS image locally or 
partially i am not sure about. Which is best and gives best performance?

Regards,
Faisal

On 12/06/12 04:29, David Groos wrote:
> Hi Faisal,
>
> I'm not sure I understand completely -- do you already have an LDAP 
> server running and you want to tie into that, or are you wanting to 
> create an LDAP server on the edubuntu server to manage your users?  
> I've done the former, but if you don't already have a centrally 
> managed LDAP system I would simply use the normal user management 
> system.  For the first 3.5 years I used this built in system.  I also 
> used webmin to manage users and in general was happy with it.
>
> (also, you mentioned you were going to get used, 'fat clients' that 
> you were going to run as local apps--I believe the correct term is you 
> were going to get used 'thick clients' since with LTSP we have the 
> term 'fat clients' used to described a situation where the client runs 
> everything locally, getting the entire image from the server.  Please 
> describe the specs of the used hardware you are getting.)  If you run 
> 15 clients as local apps you will be quite fine with the server 
> hardware you described, I'd say.  If you are able to use fat clients 
> (by having powerful enough HW specs on the clients) seems like the 
> server setup would be overkill.
>
> David G
>
> On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 10:09 PM, Faisal <xashiish at gmail.com 
> <mailto:xashiish at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi Andrie,
>
>     Sorry, i should have provided more details regarding the user. The
>     number of workstations is small but the lab will be open to a
>     large number of people, potentially tens of users and the staff
>     have never used linux before.
>
>
>     On 12/06/12 04:04, Adrie Taniwidjaja wrote:
>>
>>     I think for this small size of instalation using Edubuntu default
>>     user manager is more than enough.
>>     Why make the instalation become more complicating with LDAP stuff ?
>>
>>     On Tue, 2012-06-12 at 03:51 +0100, Faisal wrote:
>>>     Hi all,
>>>
>>>     I am thinking of setting up a small LTSP network consisting of
>>>     10-15 workstations for a local charity. I am coming from the
>>>     windows terminal services / Citrix world and i am very familiar
>>>     with that side of things and my Linux experience is average at best.
>>>
>>>     So far I have installed these flavours of an LTSP
>>>     implementation: The debianedu based Skolelinux - www.slx.no
>>>     <http://www.slx.no> and Edubuntu 12.04 in a VMWare virtual
>>>     server and i have been mighty impressed with the ease of install
>>>     of Edubuntu in particular and i think i will go with it. I have
>>>     been able to boot up a couple of thin clients simultaneously for
>>>     testing purposes and all seemed to run fine in my small lan at
>>>     home. I loved some of the built in tools such as Epostes for
>>>     ease of management.
>>>
>>>     In terms of hardware, i think we are going for donated/cheap
>>>     used fat clients and have the local apps option for LibreOffice,
>>>     Firefox etc to ease the load on the server. I am also thinking
>>>     of having an NFS share for the /home partition on a separate
>>>     grey box(if that further helps ease the load of the server and
>>>     makes it run better).
>>>
>>>     As for the server, there are good deals going on where i am for
>>>     small office servers such as the HP Proliant ML110 G7 with Intel
>>>     Xeon E3-1220 / 3.1 GHz(quad core) and 8 GB of DDR3 1333 mhz
>>>     RAM(upgradable to 16) and 7200 rpm HD disc with dual Gigabit
>>>     NICs. Would something like this be suitable for powering the
>>>     10-15 workstations or will that be pushing it?
>>>
>>>     The charity do not have tech savvy staff and i would like a
>>>     centralized user account setup with openldap. But ideally, have
>>>     a web gui front end for user account creations and password
>>>     resets. I am looking into tools such as Gosa2 -
>>>     https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/ and Easy LDAP management found
>>>     here: http://www.ldap-account-manager.org/ . I have not been
>>>     successful so far in setting up these tools, but i am still
>>>     working on it. I may ask someone in my local LUG for help with
>>>     this part if i struggle. Does anyone know similar tools?
>>>
>>>     Apologies for asking too many questions as i am still
>>>     researching and don't have a clear plan yet. Would appreciate
>>>     you advice and guidance to any tool or resource that would help
>>>     me get answers.
>>>
>>>     Regards
>>>     Faisal
>>>
>>
>>     -- 
>>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>     Adrie Taniwidjaja - PT. BeLogix Indonesia
>>     Jl. Lengkong Kecil No.73 Bandung
>>     adrie at belogix.com <mailto:adrie at belogix.com>, 022 9199 8360
>>
>>
>>
>
>
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