In comp.os.linux.setup Jem Berkes <jb@users.pc9.org> wrote:
> > No - the P100s are quite capable of running the X serverm and should
> > do so. Yes, you may wish to run the window managers on the main
> > server instead of on the P100s, but I'd hope to run them on the P100s
> > too. Experiment.
>
> I have definitely tried it. These machines have around 16 MBytes of RAM and

The ram is the killer - I run a P100 with X and kde under debian quite
happily, but it has 48MB ram. I use another P100 as the departmental
incoming mail hub and name server, and another as the main web server,
but these have considerable (96MB) of ram.

> the disks (if there are one) are about 1 gigabyte. Everything is awfully
> slow to load off the disk. Performance is awful!
>
> > There's no point. They have disks of at least 1.2GB, no?
>
> No And we have too few hard drives any way.

Well, if it is ~ 1GB, I would have expected it to be 1.2GB, from the
platter size in use then.

> I tried a quick test using XDMCP (GDM on the server) and the results from
> the 'slow machine' using Knoppix to access xdm was very encouraging!

Good!

Peter

Jem Berkes wrote:
> We have a small student computer lab at the university (50 users, under 10
> people in lab at any time). We do need Windows systems for specific
> software, but since we are engineering students there are many lab users
> comfortable with UNIX (console or X). We are poor and have crappy hardware.
> There is one "very powerful" x86 machine, two medium powered machines, and
> many slow machines (Pentium 100 ish, little RAM).
>
> Years ago, we had a purely NT/2000 lab but this was a disaster (server
> security problem). Since then I installed a Linux-based firewall and NAT
> gateway, and set up our very powerful machine running Slackware and Samba
> as a NT primary domain controller (PDC). This Linux host has all the user
> accounts and home directories on it. Also provides printer access.
>
> The other Windows hosts can login using the Linux/Samba server and access
> their files in their $HOME directories. This works flawlessly except for
> some minor roaming profile problems I hope are corrected in Samba 3.x.
>
> The problem is - while this setup works, it is an inefficient use of our
> resources since our only very powerful machine is the dedicated Linux
> server. With the remaining slow machines there is no way to have usable
> Windows hosts [ NT4 sucks, tried it ]. But these slow machines are numerous
> and have network capabilities, so I would really like to use them as dumb
> terminals to full blown X (GNOME) environments on the Slackware server!
>
> So my question is, what is the best way to set up these slow machines
> (which have SVGA monitors) as fully graphical login terminals to the Linux
> Slackware server running X.org? Ideally we want no data stored on those
> dumb terminals -- I'm even hoping they can just boot off CD-ROMs. So users
> would log in and see their own GNOME desktops on the Linux server, and run
> all the applications remotely. If I can pull this off then those slow
> machines will be convenient to use, fast graphical workstations!
>
Hello Jem,

I want to add this supplementary information:

Linux for Schools (and education) project.
http://www.skolelinux.org/portal

School-Linux based on thin client terminals (LTSP).
http://www.skolelinux.org/portal/product/thinClients


// moma
http://www.futuredesktop.org/how2burn.html#mirrors
http://www.futuredesktop.org/migration_path.html
http://www.futuredesktop.org/g++stl.html.html
http://www.futuredesktop.org ; LinkH'll.

Jem Berkes wrote:
....
> Surprisingly simple. I used a knoppix CD to boot to a console and ran
> X -query 192.168.0.50
>
> That was it, display manager came up beautifully. Everything (login
> prompt, desktop session, exit) worked exactly as if I was local.
> Fantastic!

Cool! I think this qualifies as another "way cool stuff you can do
with Linux that other OSes never even thought of".

Cheers!
Rich

> Cool! I think this qualifies as another "way cool stuff you can do
> with Linux that other OSes never even thought of".

Following up to my earlier query, I have now installed Slackware 10 on
the server. It's running Samba 3 as a PDC allowing Windows logins and
roaming profiles, XDMCP via GDM for remote X sessions, and everything
seems to work very nicely! Thanks for the tips.

The server is connected to a HP LaserJet 1200 printer which supports
Postscript. lpd is used to directly print there (no CUPS or apsfilter).
People can print under Linux sessions, and Windows users also can send
print jobs. Installing the Windows printer was a bit of a pain, but all
the instructions are in the Samba 3 official HOWTO - read it carefully!

Since the printer is connected via a bidirectional parallel port, the
printer can be queried via the PJL language to determine page counts. A
custom script I wrote, invoked by lpd, does page count accounting to show
which user printed how many pages (whether through Linux or Windows!)

For the benefit of others, here is my config. The /etc/printcap entry is:
# Postscript printer with PJL support (e.g. HP LaserJet 1200)
laserjet:cm=laserjet
:lp=/dev/null
:sd=/var/spool/lpd
:if=/usr/libexec/filters/jb-laserjet

Note that I don't tell lpd about the actual print device here. The raw
print job, which will be precoded if coming from Windows or postscript
encoded from Linux apps, will be sent through to jb-laserjet:

#!/bin/sh
# Copyright (C) 2004 Jem E. Berkes <jb2004@pc9.org>
# This script queries a PJL pagecount, then prints a pre-formatted job
# Log format: DATE\tUSERNAME\tPRECOUNT

PRINTDEV=/dev/lp0
LOGFILE=$SPOOL_DIR/pagelog

echo -e "\33%-12345X@PJL\n@PJL INFO PAGECOUNT\n\33%-12345X" > $PRINTDEV
sleep 1
PAGECOUNT=`head -n 2 < $PRINTDEV | grep "^[0-9]"`
USERID=`echo $1 | cut -b 3- | sed "s/@.*//"`
echo -e "`date \"+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S\"`\t$USERID\t$PAGECOUNT" >> $LOGFILE
# Send print job to printer
cat > $PRINTDEV

So you should see page counts in /var/spool/lpd/pagelog which can then be
interpreted as you wish.

--
Jem Berkes
http://www.sysdesign.ca/