[K12OSN] Off-topic Ultrasparc in K12LTSP

[norbert]

petre at maltzen.net wrote:

> Sun boxes, by default, listen for XDMCP requests; it's part of their 
> "the network is the computer" philosophy, in that they make it so you 
> can log into any machine on the network no matter which machine you 
> sit down in front of (assuming the machines are all Suns).  In the 
> case of your LTSP clients, they already had the kernel and X loaded, 
> so when your LTSP server went down, they just rebroadcast for another 
> server to connect to, similar to when a user logs out of the client 
> and X resets and then gets the login screen for the LTSP server.  I 
> suspect that any clients that weren't already booted would not come up 
> in this situation because there was no server to provide a kernel, etc.
>
> You may have had 20 workstations at a login screen, but how many were 
> then actually logged in and running apps?  A UltraSparc 1 would give 
> you OpenWindows and perhaps Common Desktop Environment (CDE) for 
> choices of desktops, both of which consume a lot less memory than KDE 
> or Gnome; I suspect CDE consumes more than IceWM, but OpenWindows will 
> beat them all in consuming the least amount of resources--it's also 
> the most barebones environment.  Try logging in on a bunch of the 
> clients and run a few apps;  I suspect it will keep up for a bit, but 
> soon will start swapping.
>
> Petre
>
> norbert wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I've had something strange occur while trying to use an Ultrasparc 1 
>> with Solaris 9 as a workstation. I was having some networking 
>> problems with the cable-modem, so I shut down my ltsp server but as I 
>> did the thin-clients logged into the Sparc. I don't quite understand 
>> why since I'm not running NFS shares nor DHCP on the Ultrasparc.
>>
>> Anyone with more Solaris knowledge that can enlighten me will be 
>> greatly apppreciate. Strange thing is that this is a 167Mhz 
>> UltraSparc processor with 256 MB of memory and it had 20 Workstations 
>> logged in. Whereas my main server is a P-IV 2.8 Ghz with 2 GB memory 
>> for the same number of clients and the Sparc seems to be faster !!!
>>
>> thks
>> norbert
>>
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Hi Petre,

Thanks for the expanation, yes the default was OpenWindows but I was 
suprised that 20 stations could log in never mind run applications !!!

regards
norbert