[Lancaster] Folly Terminals are go!

[Martyn Welch]

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- ------ Original message ------
On Thursday 27 May 2004 11:11, Ken Hough wrote:

> The first point comes from more than a few years working with hard nosed
> project engineers/managers. This has taught me that to make good
> progress it is neccssary to clearly define actions to be taken, who will
> do them and when. Otherwise matters drift, become vague and eventually
> dissipate.
>

I guess this'll become easier to manage if we can get a wiki up.

> WRT the server, we need a clearly defined 'spec' for the server setup.
> As far as I can see, the only active persons with sufficient expertise
> are Martyn, Andy and maybe Max. We need a clear 'spec' if only for
> maintenance purposes.
>

Once again some way of holding this centrally for us all to pitch in would be 
good (Like a wiki :) I see a pattern forming...)

> The second point relates to the idea of providing CD writer facilities.
>   Andy favours having the possibility to download software via the
> server for burning to CD. Is this viable? If, for example, a CD sized
> ISO were to be downloaded via a 10Mbit/sec network, this could hog the
> network for maybe 10 minutes or so. Other users might not be too happy.
> If we had a 100Mbit/sec link to the server, Could the existing server
> handle all the network traffic? I don't know, I'm showing my ignorance
> here.
>

It would slow it down, but I don't think this can really be avoided. We need 
to look at the network topology, possibly using a second (if we are not 
already) network card in the server just for the x-terms. If this were a 
100Mb/s card to a 100Mb/s switch then we should be able to provide rudimentry 
load balencing for 10 terminals with 10Mb/s Network cards in them!

If we mount the CD burner in a separate PC with some kind of graphical 
frontend not on the same switch as the terminals (i.e. other side of the 
Xserver) then the problem won't really be that bad. A portion of a 10Mb/s 
link is far better than most people have at home...

> Alternatively we could provide a library of CD ISOs on a standalone (?)
> PC which would be readily available for burning to CD. An 80Gb hard
> drive could hold over 100 ISOs. One of the existing PCs could be used
> for this duty. All we need is a CD writer. I suggest that this be at
> least a 20x burner, otherwise there might be a queue for CDs. Don't even
> think about burning DVDs.
>

I think this could be the first step for the burner front end - only 
pre-downloaded selection of ISO's, then extend to allow creation of ISOs in a 
very simplistic setup.

I found this: http://joerghaeger.de/webCDwriter/, but it's too involved. X CD 
roast can apparently use remote CDRs

> If we were to venture into the realms of sound and video processing, it
> seems to me that a standalone setup (ie not remote X) would be the way
> to go. Even on my own Athlon XP 2200/512MB RAM, these tasks can take
> significant periods of time to execute. The existing server (Celeron
> 1GHZ ? / 128MB RAM) would stuggle. Also, as Max has already pointed out,
> it's not easy to setup sound cards for 'remote X' operation.
>

It would also require the aquistion of a load of speakers!

Video editing just isn't going to work well on Xterms, I guess sound editing 
would also be a little ropey...

Martyn
- -- 
Martyn Welch (welchm at comp.lancs.ac.uk)

PGP Key : http://ubicomp.lancs.ac.uk/~martyn/pgpkey.html
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