Edubuntu Thin Client Classroom Experiment

I talked to our Tech Director after doing talking to some people. (see previous blog post) He suggested we put a server and a couple clients in the back of my room right now and see whether they will work. If they work, then I can show my principal that they work and how I would use them.

I have the newly released Edubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) installed on a server in my room. I used the Ubuntu-alt download cd and installed the LTSP option (press F4 on the install menu).  It installed nicely, but I had trouble getting a connection to the internet gateway. Our network manager figured out the gateway was on ETH1, fixed it, and then it worked fine. I could not get the Edubuntu 8.04 cd to read, so I just installed it via Synaptic Package Manager.  It took a while, but installed just fine….So far so good.

I was just about to this point at home. It’s installed on the server and hooked up to the thin clients through an 8 port switch. The clients will preboot with a PXE enabled network card (very cool!). This is better than my home set-up because I don’t have to boot from floppy. It still gives pretty much the same message at home.

Boot from (N)etwork or (D)isk
Searching for server (DHCP)
<sleep>

Boot from (N)etwork or (D)isk

It’s still not connecting.

Marshal, the network manager asked whether the DHCP was running. <:-{ I told him didn’t know since I hadn’t done anything but install the Linux OS.

I installed Webmin from Synatic.  Webmin is a DHCP server control panel that is accessible through the web browser on http://localhost:10000.  However, we couldn’t access it.

Marshal deduced that the plug on the end of the cable was the culprit. He didn’t have the tool with him to fix it, so we’re stuck until Monday.

I’ll let you know if we get it to work.

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