We've got a pair of Edubuntu servers handling somewhere between 80 and 100 thin clients (TCs).
The following are some notes I've made on setting up Edubuntu (edgy). I know lots (if not all) of these points are covered on the wiki, but I had to find each one out after some trial and error so I put this list together for my co-workers (hence all the links to my own website -- I'm sending this almost exactly as I sent it to them). I don't recommend so much that others exactly DO everything as I recommend to my coworkers here, but I hope that others can learn from this list and/or emulate some of these things (such as the ubuntu-media script) for their own environments. (I make no promise that these URLs will remain valid.) I've been very satisfied with Edubuntu (after #3 was discovered a couple of days ago), and I'm hoping to switch to it (from other LTSP servers) soon at our HS, which has a few hundred TCs. I'll send another report if/when we make that transition. 1. Install using the edubuntu-install CD; it sets up more-or-less everything automatically. 2. The driver necessary for the broadcom ethernet adapters in some servers is not included on the install CD; this shouldn't really be an issue, but if you care you can grab the broadcom driver for the 2.6.17-10-386 kernel from a running Ubuntu system and copy it (I used a USB drive) into your system, and then insmod it. (You could also grab it ATM from http://majen.net/misc/bnx2.ko.) 3. Immediately after installation, apt-get install linux-image-generic and make sure it's the default kernel in /boot/grub/menu.lst (otherwise you'll only use one of your CPUs). 4. Set up /etc/ltsp/dhcpd.conf for your network. 5. Go to http://wiki.ubuntu.com/RestrictedFormats to get media working (gstreamer is recommended over xine); you can just execute http://majen.net/misc/ubuntu-media if you prefer (it does all that stuff automatically). 6. Grab http://majen.net/smbldap/smbldap-installer-latest.tgz and follow the instructions on http://majen.net/smbldap/ to set up a Samba/LDAP server OR to configure Edubuntu to authenticate to another LDAP server (talk to me if you sent up an Edubuntu server to authenticate elsewhere). THANKFULLY, this will no longer be necessary when Feisty is released, as smbldap-tools will be integrated into the installer and ajmitch's authconfig tool will be included for LDAP client configuration. 7. Add all users to the fuse group so they can use USB thumb drives (talk to me and we can do this with a simple script instead of manually). If you're lazy (and don't have a reason NOT to do so), then you might just use GID 115 (fuse) as your default group. Then every user will automatically be able to use USB drives. 8. We're using DHCP failover (see http://www.madboa.com/geek/dhcp-failover/) to split the load between our two Edubuntu servers, but I'm hoping to implement a scripted mechanism of splitting among more application servers. The only thing this doesn't provide (to my knowledge) is Flash WITH SOUND on TCs. Flash itself works fine, but you can't hear it. Other media formats all play fine, AFAIK. --matt -- Open Source Software Engineering Consultant http://majen.net/ -- edubuntu-devel mailing list [email protected] Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-devel
