Re: lessdisks: client with only 20MB ram
On Sat, Nov 06, 2004 at 11:46:28AM +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
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> On 06-11-2004 07:47, Finn-Arne Johansen wrote:
> >>By accident I configured a diskless machine with only 20MB ram. It has
> >>been running fine for weeks, and I found out when I plugged in a USB
> >>device and the music streamed to the box clicked (because the kernel
> >>desperately tried to kill processes to make room).
> > so 20 MB was sufficient until you tried to stream music to the box ?
> 20 MB is sufficient to...
> * Run an X11 server accessing remote X11 apps (like an Ogg player)
> * Receive music streamed from remote server.
> * Run an SSH daemon.
>
> Plugging in a USB stick (while logged into the box with bash and mc
> open) made the music click and stall for approx. a minute, and
> investigating it revealed that probing and mounting made the kernel
> desperately kill processes).
ahh. Nice explenation :)
> Sorry for the bad description before.
> >>It has been said several times on this (and/or the norwegian) list that
> >>LTSP clients must be 32+ MB or use network swapping.
> >
> > In the current configuration, yes.
>
> Has it ever been suggested that a different configuration of LTSP can
> make it work with less?
Why should you make it work with less, when the kernels delivered with
ltsp is built with support for swap over nfs. We dont rebuild the
ltsp-packages, only repack them in debian packages.
> I am very interested in understanding what are the shortcomings of using
> low-memory machines.
The fonts are nicer when using xfs, and when we have bad fonts, people
dont like the thin clients. BUt after we got swap over nfs, that is no
longer a problem.
> I am also interested in understanding if the shortcomings are different
> between LTSP- and lessdisks-based clients.
Difference is that with ltsp, we just repack the new kernels that
comes, with lessdisks we would have to rebuild the kernel. We could of
course use the ltsp-kernels with lessdisks, but still there would be
work todo.
> >>On this machine with (according to free) only 20 MB ram, in addition to
> >>XFree86 I run esd, mc and sshd on the box. This also means I have access
> >>to manipulate it: Tell me what to test - which applications executed on
> >>a truly thin client that are expected to eat memory on the client.
> >
> >
> > I think the application that eats memory is using XFS on the
> > application-server.
>
> My current setup uses XFS on the application server.
Would it still work with 16 MB ?
> Could you be more specific? Do you have other suggestions?
800x600x16 ?
> P.S.
>
> Please do not cc me - I am subscribed to the list. :-)
Well, why dont you set up your mailer so that when I reply to your
mail, the mail is sent to the list and not to you ?
--
Finn-Arne Johansen
faj@bzz.no
http://bzz.no/
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