Setup used in Greek Schools

Wed Jun 10 14:42:26 UTC 2015

Hi David,

If boot time is a concern, what I have been doing with both LTSP setups 
and stand-alone workstations is use an SSD and mount / to it, and use a 
big HD and mount /home to it (sometimes /var as well).  Alternatively, I 
sometimes mount just /boot to the SSD instead.

If you don't use an SSD for the booting, it's doubtful you'll get any 
real improvement on boot time.  You really don't need a big one, either.

If you're new to using SSD's, and want to give it a try, make sure AHCI 
is enabled in your BIOS before you do the install, as well.  I missed 
that in one of my most remote installations and have been paying for it 
for a long time (takes forever to read packages, and other things).

Thanks!
Adam Fischer

On 06/10/2015 09:31 AM, David Groos wrote:
> Thanks Alkis for this information!
>
> Based on what I now know, I'll...
> --Continue with ltsp-pnp, all clients FAT.
> --Give 14.04 a try with Unity/Gnome/Gnome-flashback/Mate and do some
> simple boot-time benchmarking.
> --Read up on flow control and do some experiments using the Epoptes
> benchmarking tool (both things of which I was unfamiliar).
> --Continue to use both ff and gc (now I know why gc works better
> sometimes) even though ff is my preferred as it is more open sourc-esque
> --Update the 2 nic install page for 14.04
>
> Questions:
> --I could put 2 hard drives on the classroom server and install the
> system on one HD and /home on another HD. Seems like that would
> significantly improve performance during those times when some clients
> were booting and others were logging in, but that's just an idea. Your
> guess/knowledge on this?
> --Any additional "suggested reading" pages? With google translate my
> Greek goes from 0 to 60 in under 10 seconds ;)
>
> Finally:
> --What's a way/s I can contribute back to your/our efforts of
> ubuntu/ltsp in ed? I saw this page:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/sch-scripts/+question/228810 but it's not
> too current. I'm doing my own bit to resist the corporate, self-labeled
> "education-reform" movement whose advocates think they can ignorantly
> apply simplistic free-market principles to improve education. You can
> imagine how that plays out in big-district technology bureaucracies.
>  From what I read, this corporate ed-reform movement is world-wide.
> [stepping back down from the soap box...]
>
> BTW Here's a blog post by a Finnish guy I've followed for many years. He
> has many important things to say about modern/future education and about
> technology and open source as well.
> http://teemuleinonen.fi/2015/06/09/why-freelibreopen-source-in-learning-is-important/
>
> Enjoy your summer,
> David G
>
> On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 1:07 AM Alkis Georgopoulos <alkisg at gmail.com
> <mailto:alkisg at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi David, sorry but I don't have the time to write an extensive how-to
>     (I already maintain one in Greek :)), so I'll only mention a few tips:
>
>     * We're still using Ubuntu 12.04.x because we have extremely varying
>     hardware, so some schools need the old Xorg and kernel from 12.04.1,
>     while other schools need the new ones from 12.04.5, and there were even
>     schools that needed a new kernel and an old Xorg.
>     That's due to unfortunate regressions of the newer software.
>     We also have an issue with Ubuntu 14.04 keyboard layout not working
>     properly in Unity/Gnome/Gnome-flashback, and another one with
>     gnome-keyring making thousand of files with SSHFS (LP: #1321922).
>     These 3 issues maybe don't affect many of the users here, so you can
>     probably just go ahead and use 14.04.
>
>     * I recently committed in LTSP a few fixes for Unity, so if you'll be
>     using the Greek schools PPA, you can select any desktop environment that
>     you want.
>     Gnome-flashback and Mate are also good choices, especially if you also
>     have thin clients where 3D doesn't work over the network and software
>     rendering is used instead, making Unity extremely slow.
>
>     * About the flow control issue (gigabit server, 100mbps clients) we've
>     recently updated our /etc/network/if-up.d/sch-scripts script so that it
>     works in all cases, so you can just follow this how-to I've written:
>     https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuLTSP/FlowControl
>
>     * Firefox is a good browser. Sometimes a newer flash is needed though,
>     so it's nice to also have google-chrome installed, which has flash
>     version 18 instead of 11.
>
>     * And of course I always suggest to people to follow the ltsp-pnp page,
>     as it makes installation and maintenance much easier:
>     https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuLTSP/ltsp-pnp
>
>     Cheers,
>     Alkis
>
>     On 10/06/2015 07:12 πμ, David Groos wrote:
>      > I'm thinking that there are more people than just myself who
>     would like
>      > to know this info so am asking here. Right, Alkis, you are
>     probably the
>      > knowledge font here! Basically, what's the ltsp-pnp lab setup for
>     next
>      > school year in the Greek Schools?
>      >
>      > I'm looking for a (hopefully quick-booting) modern yet stable
>      > configuration. I'll be creating the new install in a month or 6
>     weeks.
>      > I'll be maintaining 5 classrooms including my own, each setup
>     will use
>      > the teacher computer as the ltsp-pnp server. Probably not
>     important, but
>      > I'll be using the 2 nic setup and a single gig --> (12-36 port)
>     100 mb
>      > switch. I imagine this is already written out online but have not
>      > succeeded in finding it. Each machine will have 2 gigs RAM and be
>     maybe
>      > 5-7 year old.
>      >
>      > Any preference for a browser or tricks to lighten the load of the
>     image?
>      >
>      > Thanks for your ltsp-in-schools leadership,
>      > David G
>      >
>      >
>
>
>     --
>     edubuntu-users mailing list
>     edubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com <mailto:edubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
>     Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
>     https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users
>
>
>