[Ltsp-discuss] New Rpi or Odroic C1 for LTSP?

Discussion:

Rolf-Werner Eilert

2015-02-10 09:13:30 UTC

Hi folks,

Just thought that the new RasPi or the Odroid C1 might work good as LTSP
terminals. They both have 1 GB RAM, the RasPi being somewhat slower. The
only prerequisite would be PXE booting, but shouldn't they both be able to?

Does anyone here already have tried them?

Rolf

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Harry Lavender

2015-02-10 10:06:11 UTC

Permalink

Hi Rolf,

The new Raspberry Pi's will make excellent thin clients. I have a guide
here for the model B+, but I will be updating it once I get round to
acquiring a new raspberry pi B2.

www.uzerp.com/blog/running-raspberry-pis-as-thin-clients-with-ubuntu-14-04-lts/

Post by Rolf-Werner Eilert
Hi folks,
Just thought that the new RasPi or the Odroid C1 might work good as LTSP
terminals. They both have 1 GB RAM, the RasPi being somewhat slower. The
only prerequisite would be PXE booting, but shouldn't they both be able to?
Does anyone here already have tried them?
Rolf
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--
Regards

Harry Lavender
Systems Administrator
Severn Delta Limited
DDI 01278 726278
Tel 01278 428200
Fax 01278 458766

Showground Road,
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Rolf-Werner Eilert

2015-02-10 10:58:16 UTC

Permalink

That's good news, and a nice page! I browsed through it, and even
without drinking so much coffee :) I have a question:

What kind of kernel does the RasPi load here? You wrote there is
actually no need for an i386 kernel, but is there yet another one?

Another question is RAM. You say, 128 MB is enough. I have a group of
PIII (Dell Optiplex something...) terminals here with 128 MB, and it's
not enough. They get into LDM, then crash. With 256 MB, they run ok
(though rather slowly). Any idea?

Regards
Rolf

Post by Harry Lavender
Hi Rolf,
The new Raspberry Pi's will make excellent thin clients. I have a guide
here for the model B+, but I will be updating it once I get round to
acquiring a new raspberry pi B2.
www.uzerp.com/blog/running-raspberry-pis-as-thin-clients-with-ubuntu-14-04-lts/

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Harry Lavender

2015-02-10 12:04:41 UTC

Permalink

I'm not entirely sure how BerryTerminal works, but since ARM cannot
execute x86 code (i386 build of LTSP), I'd guess that it uses LDM and
some kind of RDP mixture. You can build a AMD64 kernel, but I find this
pointless, as i386 is compatible with all clients, as in extreme cases
we have a couple of super old 32 bit machines kicking about.

What window manager do you use? As the X server runs on the local
client, a heavier desktop will probably leave the system without any
memory, good examples of heavy desktops are Unity and the like, along
with Gnome3.

Cheers,

Harry

Post by Rolf-Werner Eilert
That's good news, and a nice page! I browsed through it, and even
What kind of kernel does the RasPi load here? You wrote there is
actually no need for an i386 kernel, but is there yet another one?
Another question is RAM. You say, 128 MB is enough. I have a group of
PIII (Dell Optiplex something...) terminals here with 128 MB, and it's
not enough. They get into LDM, then crash. With 256 MB, they run ok
(though rather slowly). Any idea?
Regards
Rolf

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Vagrant Cascadian

2015-02-10 18:53:42 UTC

Permalink

Post by Harry Lavender
I'm not entirely sure how BerryTerminal works, but since ARM cannot
execute x86 code (i386 build of LTSP), I'd guess that it uses LDM and
some kind of RDP mixture.

Last I looked, BerryTerminal was just a build of various LTSP software
such as LDM, ltspfs, etc. and a core operating system that emulates an
LTSP thin client.

With a thin client, most of the code that the user interacts with is
running on the server, and merely displayed to the thin client. This is
no different weather the client is running i386 code and the server is
running amd64 code, or if the client is running ARM code and the server
is i386.

live well,
vagrant

Vagrant Cascadian

2015-02-10 18:49:02 UTC

Permalink

Post by Harry Lavender
The new Raspberry Pi's will make excellent thin clients. I have a guide
here for the model B+, but I will be updating it once I get round to
acquiring a new raspberry pi B2.
www.uzerp.com/blog/running-raspberry-pis-as-thin-clients-with-ubuntu-14-04-lts/

The instructions to install an i386 LTSP environment would only be
needed if you want to run i386 compatible thin clients, which wouldn't
be any of the raspberry pi boards or odroid c1, which are ARM based.
You should be able to install berryterminal on your clients, or genuine
LTSP for ARM without installing any i386 LTSP chroots on your server.

Arguably the rpi2 and odroid c1 would actually make decent fat
clients...

live well,
vagrant

Vagrant Cascadian

2015-02-10 18:41:33 UTC

Permalink

Post by Rolf-Werner Eilert
Just thought that the new RasPi or the Odroid C1 might work good as LTSP
terminals. They both have 1 GB RAM, the RasPi being somewhat slower.

They might make decent thin clients, though it may take a while for the
kernel support to get upstream, especially with all supported features.

Post by Rolf-Werner Eilert
The only prerequisite would be PXE booting, but shouldn't they both be
able to?

They probably don't do genuine PXE booting, but there is support for
emulating PXE boot in recent versions of u-boot (a bootloader commonly
used on many ARM boards).

live well,
vagrant

Denis Croombs

2015-02-10 19:15:27 UTC

Permalink

We use the original pi's and berry term with ltsp and then each person uses xfreerdp to remote windows server 2008r2 desktops as windows pc's the ltsp is locked and so the people do not even see it, but it works for 50 plus people in our teams of staff
I believe the new pi's may not give too much of a speed increase when using berry term but not sure about using them as pxe boot devices because of the CPU support.

Kind Regards
Denis Croombs
00353 861729383
Sent from my iPhone

Rolf-Werner Eilert

2015-02-11 07:24:40 UTC

Permalink

Hmmm - that's interesting. What about graphics speed when showing
animated transitions in PowerPoint or Impress? What about speed with
flash-decorated websites (e.g. carousel with images or ad video at the
top of the page)?

These are the bottlenecks in our environment. Can you tell me something
from your experience with the pi's here?

Rolf

Post by Denis Croombs
We use the original pi's and berry term with ltsp and then each person uses xfreerdp to remote windows server 2008r2 desktops as windows pc's the ltsp is locked and so the people do not even see it, but it works for 50 plus people in our teams of staff
I believe the new pi's may not give too much of a speed increase when using berry term but not sure about using them as pxe boot devices because of the CPU support.
Kind Regards
Denis Croombs
00353 861729383
Sent from my iPhone

Denis Croombs

2015-02-11 08:04:10 UTC

Permalink

Post by Rolf-Werner Eilert
Hmmm - that's interesting. What about graphics speed when showing
animated transitions in PowerPoint or Impress? What about speed with
flash-decorated websites (e.g. carousel with images or ad video at the
top of the page)?
These are the bottlenecks in our environment. Can you tell me something
from your experience with the pi's here?
Rolf

It is actually very interesting in that so far we are finding very
little difference between the PI/LTSP speed when you RDP onto the Server
2008r2 desktop and a windows 7 pc RDP onto the same Server 2008r2
desktop on BIG website pages, they are slightly slower than the same
page on a new windows 7 PC, but we are still working to narrow that
pi/ltsp to win7 PC speed gap. (so far this looks like the server HDD (80
to 120 server 2008r2 desktops) is the bottle neck so we have changed
from raid 5 to raid 50 to help fix that.
But for our normal customer service agents it makes no difference it is
only the power users/supervisors in the teams who notice the difference,
but we are continuing to roll out the setup to our 50+ teams all with
different requirements.

Regards
Denis

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Rolf-Werner Eilert

2015-02-11 17:09:45 UTC

Permalink

Post by Denis Croombs

Oh, that sounds promising. After all, a pi isn't that expensive, maybe I
should get one and give it a try ;)

Rolf

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