[K12OSN] Fedora-9 LTSP - Need help with various issues - probably FAQ

John Ellson john.ellson at comcast.net
Sat Jan 17 16:45:31 UTC 2009


John Ellson wrote:
> Warren, and others.
>
> Thanks for your guidance.
>
> Some feedback.
>
> First, since there was a suggestion that fc10 might fix some issues 
> and we were expecting to upgrade soon anyway, we decided to go ahead 
> and do it.   I have to say that it was not a very satisfactory 
> experience.
>    -Udev or something in fc10 decided to ignore the modprobe aliases 
> and ifcfg-eth* numbering of the interfaces, in particular bridge ports 
> no longer take numbers apparently.  So our upstream interface which 
> was eth1 became eth0 and picked up the wrong static configuration, 
> resulting in the server not reappearing on the network.
I misspoke.   eth1 became eth2, not eth0.       "dmesg | grep eth1"  shows:
    e100: eth1: e100_probe: addr 0xfd8ff000, irq 20, MAC addr 
00:d0:b7:81:c6:46
    udev: renamed network interface eth1 to eth2
Why did udev do this?

Another issue that I forgot to mention is that there are processes left 
running after a user logs off a client.  Is this normal?
    ellson    3246  0.0  0.0 268756  3236 ?        S<sl Jan16   0:00 
/usr/bin/pulseaudio --start
    ellson    3277  0.0  0.0  59676  2192 ?        S    Jan16   0:00 
/usr/libexec/pulse/gconf-helper


John



>
>    - Yum or rpm, or anaconda, failed to upgrade a number of rpms which 
> were the same version number, but just fc10 instead of fc9.  Its as if 
> some version comparison routine isn't seeing 10 > 9 ?    This 
> definitely broke cups until I manually upgraded the rpms using 
> --oldpackage.     It may have broken other things too as I'm still 
> looking for fc9 rpms that are not in fc10 (difficult because the fc10 
> distro does contain some fc9 rpms).
>    - The kernel, or xorg, failed to properly configure the resolution 
> of some client monitors that had worked fine in fc9.   It would show 
> the login screen at twice the proper size so that we could only see 
> half of it. We discovered that it was related to the use of VGA cables 
> on radeon3200 graphics cards.   Switching to DVI cables where 
> possible  seems to fix it, but now we have to replace a couple of 
> VGA-only monitors to get back to where we were with fc9.
>
> We have a new problem with nautilus and bonobo on the (slower?) i386 
> clients.   The nautilus desktop icons appear to flash up briefly 
> before the desktop appears, then the desktop shows no icons and an 
> error popup:
>    "Nautilus cannot be used now due to an unexpected error from bonobo 
> when attempting top locate the factory.  Killing 
> bonobo-acticvation-server and restarting nautilus may help fix the 
> problem."
> Killing bonobo-activation-server doesn't seem to have any effect, but 
> starting nautilus from a shell woks, except that we really can't 
> expect the elementary kids to do that.
>
> Fedora 10 has made client sound worse.  We used to hear very quiet 
> sounds, now nothing.  In /var/log/messages I see stuff like:
>    Jan 15 18:26:23 sol pulseaudio[2806]: polkit.c: Cannot set UID on 
> session object
> .
>    Jan 15 18:26:23 sol pulseaudio[2806]: main.c: Called SUID root and 
> real-time/high-priority scheduling was requested in the configuration. 
> However, we lack the necessary priviliges:
>    Jan 15 18:26:23 sol pulseaudio[2806]: main.c: We are not in group 
> 'pulse-rt' and
> PolicyKit refuse to grant us priviliges. Dropping SUID again.
>    Jan 15 18:26:23 sol pulseaudio[2806]: main.c: For enabling 
> real-time scheduling please acquire the appropriate PolicyKit 
> priviliges, or become a member of 'pulse-rt', or increase the 
> RLIMIT_NICE/RLIMIT_RTPRIO resource limits for this user.
>    Jan 15 18:26:23 sol pulseaudio[2806]: pid.c: Stale PID file, 
> overwriting.
>    Jan 15 18:26:23 sol pulseaudio[2806]: main.c: 
> setrlimit(RLIMIT_NICE, (31, 31)) failed: Operation not permitted
>    Jan 15 18:26:23 sol pulseaudio[2806]: main.c: 
> setrlimit(RLIMIT_RTPRIO, (9, 9)) failed: Operation not permitted
>
>
> USB memory sticks are no better.    When we plug one in nautilus shows 
> the mount, and the folder can be opened seeing file and directory 
> icons, but the files can't be read.  For example, clicking on an image 
> produced an error from eog:  "error reading from file, cannot allocate 
> memory"
> I saw your note indicating that this was handled by "gvfs", OK, so 
> where do I look for gvfs problems?
>
> Is it possible that both USB and sound problems are authentication 
> related?    Does the upgrade process even attempt to migrate for new 
> authentication requirements?      Is there a guide specifically on 
> authentication set up, or better yet, an audit script to suggest what 
> might need changing?
>
> Thanks for the pointers to latest howto 
> <http://wiki.ltsp.org/twiki/bin/view/Ltsp/LtspDocumentationUpstream>
> and the technique for upgrading kernels in the chroot images.   Can I 
> suggest that a paragraph on chroot updates, and a link to the larger 
> howto be added to https://fedorahosted.org/k12linux/wiki/InstallGuide 
> ?    I really like that page as a one-stop quickstart for ltsp on Fedora.
>
>
> I haven't had a chance to retry local apps.
>
>
>
> John
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Warren Togami wrote:
>> John Ellson wrote:
>>> - Sound "works," if the classroom is silent and you have very good 
>>> ears!      How do I increase the volume on all clients to a useful 
>>> level?
>>>   In /var/lib/tftpboot/ltsp/*/lts.conf we have:
>>>      SOUND=True
>>>      VOLUME=100
>>>      HEADPHONE_VOLUME=100
>>>      PCM_VOLUME=100
>>>      FRONT_VOLUME=100
>>>  There was recent discussion, for Ubuntu, at: 
>>> http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/Ubuntu/2008-08/msg01267.html
>>>   should I be trying to apply this?
>>
>> I have noticed this as well.  I am digging into this sometime soon 
>> myself.
>>
>>>
>>> - If I plugin a USB memory stick in the client, I get an icon on the 
>>> desktop, which I can open with nautilus, but none of the content is 
>>> shown?    Where do I  look next?
>>
>> I have never seen this personally, although I haven't used F9 for a 
>> few months now.  Could you please try booting your server with the 
>> K12Linux F10 Live Server and see if the clients behave the same there?
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> - Where is the FAQ on how to update the client images properly?      
>>> I tried using yum in the chroot, but kernel updates didn't work, so 
>>> now I'm  rebuilding the client images from scratch periodically.
>>
>> After updating the kernels in the chroot, did you use 
>> "ltsp-update-kernels" outside the chroot to copy the kernel from 
>> inside the chroot to /var/lib/tftpboot/ARCH/?
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> - Where is the step-by-step FAQ on configuring and installing local 
>>> apps?
>>
>> Umm... upstream should have this documented, if not please yell at 
>> them.  The only thing unique about our local apps installation is yum 
>> instead of apt.
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> - Are last-modified-in-2004 FAQs like the one at:  
>>> http://ltsp.mirrors.tds.net/pub/ltsp/docs/ltsp-4.1-en.html still 
>>> accurate?   I assume that the current documentation is supposed to 
>>> be at https://fedorahosted.org/k12linux/, but there seems to be a 
>>> lot missing there.
>>
>> Could you please make a list of specific documentation items you 
>> really need rewritten for K12Linux?  The old docs are so old that it 
>> would be better to write them from scratch.
>>
>> Warren Togami
>> wtogami at redhat.com
>>
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>>
>
>


-- 
John Ellson




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