From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Dec 21 0:45:53 2000 From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Dec 21 00:45:51 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from homer.softweyr.com (bsdconspiracy.net [208.187.122.220]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 18D2A37B400 for ; Thu, 21 Dec 2000 00:45:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from [127.0.0.1] (helo=softweyr.com ident=Fools trust ident!) by homer.softweyr.com with esmtp (Exim 3.16 #1) id 1491Lt-0000Vn-00; Thu, 21 Dec 2000 01:45:29 -0700 Sender: wes@FreeBSD.ORG Message-ID: <3A41C329.6E3C1EFD@softweyr.com> Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 01:45:29 -0700 From: Wes Peters Organization: Softweyr LLC X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.12 i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Mike Nowlin Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: keeping lots of systems all the same... References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Mike Nowlin wrote: > > I recently made the decision to upgrade all of our net-booted X terminals > to full-blown workstations. (Basically, adding a hard drive and some > memory.) Having 19 people running Netscape remotely on our Alpha is > sucking up a gig of RAM and almost two gigs of swap, not to mention the > "normal" things the Alpha has to do... > > After fighting off (quite violently, I might add) the top-level > management who wanted to "just give everyone a Windows 98 machine - I > never have any problems with mine at home...!", I came up with the > following: > > -- Celeron 700-ish, 100Mb FXP, 20G, 64 or 128M, S3 or ATI Rage video > -- NIS for uname/passwd auth - any user can use any machine > -- /home mounted via NFS off a master file server for the users' files > -- everything else (with whatever exceptions I find) on the local HD. > -- (suggestions???) > > The users will basically need to be able to run X w/Gnome, StarOffice, > Nutscrape, and (the huge, resource-hogging app) telnet. Figure 32MB RAM for FreeBSD & X, 64MB for Netscape, and 64MB for StarOffice. If you want to run both Netscape and StarOffice at the same time, 128MB isn't enough. Sigh. If your users have a "usual" work position, you may way to place their home directory on that machine. Export all the home directories and mount them on the other machines using amd. This does make the amd configuration differ from machine to machine, however. WindowMaker feels much more snappy than Gnome on limited CPU resources. I'm not sure a 700 Mhz Celeron really qualifies, though. Durons are cheaper and faster than Celerons, though the motherboards may more than make up the difference in price. FreeBSD runs quite nicely on Duron and Athlon systems based on good motherboards. Good luck, and write an article about it when you're done. DaemonNews would be happy to publish it. ;^) -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message