Re: looking for net image success stories
Greetings,
On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 10:28 AM, Rob Owens <rowens@ptd.net> wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 07:52:58AM -0600, Richard Nelson wrote:
>> Greetings,
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 7:21 PM, Rob Owens <rowens@ptd.net> wrote:
>> > I'd like to hear how folks on this list are using net images of Debian
>> > Live.
>> >
>>
...snip...
>>
>> I was once a user of LTSP for a few hundred clients, but there were
>> some limitations that were found to be clumsy to work around. I found
>> that shipping out a full Debian desktop to each client was the easiest
>> way to go.
>>
> What specific problems did you have? I know that flash video seems to
> be one of the weak points of LTSP. Flash is a CPU hog, and having every
> user run it on the same server isn't so great. These days a lot of
> people are starting to run Firefox as a local app to combat that
> problem.
>
You mention a some of the issues, and to stay on topic for the
debian-live list, I will simply say the web requires multimedia and
local device access for a best experience. It was at the time we
switched to Debian Live and still is, as I said above, easier to ship
out a full desktop and just throw it away upon shutdown. Especially a
desktop that is essentially hardware agnostic.
>> > The options I've come up with so far are LTSP "fat client mode" (still
>> > researching this one), DRBL (Diskless Remote Boot in Linux), and Debian
>> > Live net images.
>> >
>>
>> I use stock netboot with plainfs so the image can be chrooted to and
>> tuned in for quick fixes for the fleet. I would never go back to LTSP
>> if my clients had sufficient processing and ram.
>>
> Thanks, I didn't even know that was an option. Do you know what the
> difference is between "plain" and "ext2" or "ext3" for the
> --chroot-filesystem?
see man page lb_config .
>
...snip...
>> All I can say is Debian Live has been a work horse at many locations for me.
>
> Out of curiosity, what sort of environment are you using this in?
> School, recreation center, etc?
>
Public Schools and public kiosk settings. I actually think
http://webconverger.com/ is best for general web kiosk.
>> >
>> > I'd appreciate any advice, anecdotes, warnings, etc.
>>
>> Proper planing with sufficient testing never hurts.
>>
> I guess it's time for me to start tinkering. Thanks for the info.
>
Welcome.
Reply to: