[ubuntu-us-nc] LTSP Questions, was Re: ubuntu-us-nc Digest, Vol 205, Issue 1

[Jeff Lane]

Just a moderator request, but could you please remember to change the 
subject line to something more appropriate if you're quoting the digest?

Re: [ubuntu-us-nc] ubuntu-us-nc Digest, Vol 205, Issue 1

means nothing to people who don't get the digest version.

On 02/28/2013 10:51 PM, Christopher Prechter wrote:
> Jim Rorie:  That sounds interesting.  I wish I could help, but I don't
> have any career skills.  I am 21 years old, but I am going back to
> school down in Florida this Fall.  Maybe I'll pick up some skills with
> Windozer Server, but I'll definitely focus on Linux-oriented classes
> (it's my passion =] ).  I'm more of a desktop user, but if I happen to
> find Windows Server guy I will let you know for sure.

Ugh... personal annoyance... "Windoze" etc... that's a very smug epithet 
from someone who admits to having no career skills... but it's not you, 
anyone who uses terms like that annoy me.  That's the kind of attitude 
that make Linux users look like elitist snobs (see Richard Stallman, 
RMS).  I very seldom if EVER see my Windows using friends sling 
derogatory names at Linuxes, but I see it all the time from our community.

More to the point, good luck with School.  As a former college 
instructor, I'm interested in what Linux classes you can find there.  I 
taught "Intro to Linux/Unix" for a few years but IME, Linux specific 
courses are not that common in college.  Most everything is 
Windows-centric, unless you're doing deep hardware level programming in 
C or ASM, and even then that could be on Linux, or any of the Unix 
flavors or even Windows.

> Ubuntu NC Community, I have a question (more of a hypothetical project
> idea, if you will).  I was reading the book, /Ubuntu Unleashed: 2012
> Edition/, when I found the chapter on the Linux Terminal Server Project
> (LTSP).  This gave me some fun ideas what I could do with a dedicated,
> remote X11 server.  I would like to know if it's possible (or practical)
> to construct a dedicated X11 server for playing video games and using a
> low-cost device like the Raspberry Pi as the thin client?  (The
> Raspberry Pi doesn't support PXE/network booting, but you get the idea.)
>   I could connect my Logitech GamePad game controller or my
> mouse/keyboard to the thin client.

Not sure how well remote X running a game on Steam would do on a 
Raspberry Pi.  You will NOT get the performance you're expecting from 
the below mentioned nVidia card with a remote X server.  All that does 
is export the X session, NOT the graphics horsepower.  Thus, your 
graphics capability will be limited to whatever the thinclient can provide.

>
> Possible hardware specs for the LTSP server would be: Intel Core i7
> Extreme/Intel Xeon processor, 8GB -- 16GB of RAM (is dual-channel memory
> the best, and will performance increase with the less RAM modules that
> need to be installed?), one nVidia GeForce GTX 680 graphics card
> (packing 4 GB of GDDR5 memory and 1344 CUDA cores), two hard drives
> (need partitioning ideas/suggestions for this) -- perhaps 1 SSD for
> /usr, /lib, & /home; and 1 HDD at 7200 rpm for /root and /tmp, and
> finally, two 1GB or 2GB Ethernet cards.  It's a similar idea to Sony's
> plans for the PlayStation 4, but I want it to be powered by Steam and
> Ubuntu GNU/Linux!

I'd question whether that nVidia card would be supported.  You may end 
up having to dig up drivers from nVidia directly as the recent version 
of the nvidia-current and nvidia-current-updates may not contain 
support.  IIRC, that's a relatively new card, so YMMV.

Next, if you're going to split the FS up like that (not a bad idea) just 
put /tmp, /var and swap on the platters and everything else on the SSD. 
  The rest shouldn't be accessed enough to be too hard on the SSD, but 
/tmp and /var do get a lot of writes done (/tmp stuff, /var/log, 
/var/cache, /var/run, etc) as well as reads.  It may be worthwhile to 
put /home on the platter too but that's up to you.

Next, what's a 2GB Ethernet card? I am unfamiliar with the spec for 
2GbE, all I've ever heard of or seen are 1GbE or 10GbE. The only 2Gbps 
devices I am aware of are FibreChannel HBAs.

Anyway, welcome to the party... and you don't have to be a developer to 
contribute. Learn what you can and help others in the community, that's 
the power of the Linux community :)  Anyone can be an active member, not 
just programmers and hackers.



-- 
Jeff Lane - Hardware Certification Engineer and Test Tools Developer
Ubuntu Ham: W4KDH
Freenode IRC: bladernr or bladernr_
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