Idea: Two Netbooks and a Server

ltpl4y3r · 2010-03-10 03:12:32

It's time to upgrade my setup. I have a P4 tower and my wife has an old laptop. We are both going back to school for graduate education, and this is the kind of setup we're thinking about.

We are going to get a pair of tablet/convertible netbooks to tote around for classes, and we are thinking about getting a 'server' for heavy lifting. The server would house our roaming profiles(1), and would update every time the netbook registered our wireless. Now, that was the easy part.

For my second trick, I want to be able to connect the netbooks to a monitor/keyboard/mouse/ethernet and have them act a dumb terminal(1) to the server. There are a few sporadic times when I need to edit a video, or two, but my main reason for doing this is: netbooks are SLOW.

My question is: Is this setup feasible?

I want to hook up two netbooks to my brand new shiny dual or quad core server, and be able to use it as if I were plugged directly into it. I want heavy docs/pdfs to fly open, like they were nothing. Basically, I want to outsource the processing power to the server. Something like VNC might be okay, I've not used it on a local network much. I tried x-forwarding a while back on a 100Mb connection, but it still seemed to lag a bit. I'm starting to wonder if there is a better in between solution.

I also need each user's home directory synced(both ways) between the netbook and its primary user.

Any input?

monstermudder78 · 2010-03-10 04:11:33

Great idea and I am interested to see this develop. I tried coming up with solutions for a very similar idea a couple of years ago and found things that would work, but nothing simple enough to actually use on a daily basis.

What I have settled on is Dropbox on both my netbook and my desktop. That way I can do homework at home on my desktop, save everything in the dropbox folder, then open it later on my netbook at school. Being as how the files in dropbox are saved in at least 3 places (netbook, desktop, server) I don't see why you couldn't put configs in your dropbox folder then use symlinks to point from ~/ or .config to ~/Dropbox or whatever you choose.

As far as the dumb terminal, I have no idea.

keenerd · 2010-03-10 04:49:18

I did something very similar about four years ago using a P4 as the server and a P2 laptop as the dumb terminal. VNC worked great. I could even watch full screen video over G wifi with it. But video only worked because my server was on campus. Unless you have a blazing fast uplink, running it from home will not be pleasant. You might be better off trading your shiny home server for a Slice (or other cheap virtual server) because those datacenters usually have 100Mb connections to major universities. Alternatively, see if a friendly lab can colo your server.

Keep an open mind, netbooks are not quite as weak as you think. I traded the P4-VNC-P2 arrangement for a netbook, and am still using that same netbook for work. (Though I kept the P4 around for big numerical analysis jobs and file hosting.)

Trent · 2010-03-10 13:34:41

I hope you've investigated this already, but if you haven't -- just remember that many universities place limits on bandwidth. You do NOT want to use your spiffy new system for a day and suddenly realize that you've used up the next month's bandwidth. (I'm speaking from personal experience here.)

pogeymanz · 2010-03-10 14:00:07

If you aren't going to be doing hardcore work with your server while you're not home, VNC should be plenty fast. Like others said, accessing it from the internet might be slightly painful.

ltpl4y3r · 2010-03-10 14:47:47

I don't actually plan on accessing my server from campus. I only plan to use it as a 'dumb terminal' when I am at home, so bandwidth isn't really much of an issue.

Would VNC allow for both netbooks to access the server at the same time, without overlapping? I thought it was just desktop forwarding.

pseudonomous · 2010-03-10 15:58:00

If you are just using your netbooks as Xclients at home, using Xdmcp is actually not that bad of an idea; it's completely insecure, but the only way anybody is going to sniff your packets is if they have access to your wires (or you use easy to crack wireless encryption/no encryption). I have done something like this, and it works pretty good. Serving up programs to multiple clients is one of the fundamental things XDMCP was designed for so you shouldn't have any problem with two people having desktop sessions at the same time. And it's pretty darn easy to setup.

The only thing I'm not sure about is sound; back when I was doing this, I was still playing sound out of the "server" machine, not my netbook. Any solution you choose might take some fiddling with to get sound to work properly.

Another thing:

Playing videos (DVDs) over XDMCP takes a lot of bandwidth; you can do it acceptably with 100base ethernet (the difference vs. running locally is noticible but not unacceptable) but 802.11g doesn't cut it (way too much stutter). I haven't tried it with 802.11n; that might work, it should have enough bandwidth, I'm not sure if there are latency issues, though.

thayer · 2010-03-10 15:58:40

Just wanted to say that for my wife and I this configuration has worked out quite nicely. We have a central PC that hosts our mp3s, photos and whatnot, but we use our individual netbooks for email, streaming audio, and general productivity. Mind you, I use mostly terminal apps so shelling into the server is easy. I rip & burn media using the server or my external DVD burner.

As for speed, netbooks aren't the fastest but are still quite adequate...I use mine for package building, webdev, and graphics design with no problem. It also handles light gaming titles such as Thief 2, Torchlight, Pirates!, and World of Goo just fine.

Overall I'm very happy with the setup and would be hard pressed to go back to a desktop.

Last edited by thayer (2010-03-10 16:01:41)

ltpl4y3r · 2010-03-10 19:40:05

pseudonomous wrote:

If you are just using your netbooks as Xclients at home, using Xdmcp is actually not that bad of an idea; it's completely insecure, but the only way anybody is going to sniff your packets is if they have access to your wires (or you use easy to crack wireless encryption/no encryption). I have done something like this, and it works pretty good. Serving up programs to multiple clients is one of the fundamental things XDMCP was designed for so you shouldn't have any problem with two people having desktop sessions at the same time. And it's pretty darn easy to setup.
The only thing I'm not sure about is sound; back when I was doing this, I was still playing sound out of the "server" machine, not my netbook. Any solution you choose might take some fiddling with to get sound to work properly.
Another thing:
Playing videos (DVDs) over XDMCP takes a lot of bandwidth; you can do it acceptably with 100base ethernet (the difference vs. running locally is noticible but not unacceptable) but 802.11g doesn't cut it (way too much stutter). I haven't tried it with 802.11n; that might work, it should have enough bandwidth, I'm not sure if there are latency issues, though.

I just set up XDMCP on my main box, then logged into it with my wife's laptop. That was pretty cool! It is EXACTLY what I was looking for! I tried it using our wireless G and you were correct about movies, it was unacceptable. I also had trouble scrolling... I had google-chrome open and scrolling down reddit.com was pretty rough, even using 100base ethernet. If I can get the scrolling to be smoother (and maybe find a solution for sound), then this would be fantastic!

Also, is there a way to open up a terminal for local access, while using XDMCP? Kind of a minor detail, but it would be pretty silly to have to ssh back into the notebook I'm using to access the server...

thayer wrote:

Just wanted to say that for my wife and I this configuration has worked out quite nicely. We have a central PC that hosts our mp3s, photos and whatnot, but we use our individual netbooks for email, streaming audio, and general productivity. Mind you, I use mostly terminal apps so shelling into the server is easy. I rip & burn media using the server or my external DVD burner.
As for speed, netbooks aren't the fastest but are still quite adequate...I use mine for package building, webdev, and graphics design with no problem. It also handles light gaming titles such as Thief 2, Torchlight, Pirates!, and World of Goo just fine.
Overall I'm very happy with the setup and would be hard pressed to go back to a desktop.

This is great to hear! I'm confident that my wife and I will end up feeling the same way.

EnvoyRising · 2010-03-10 20:33:00

Not quite the DIY route you were wanting to go, but maybe later this year you could invest in Lenovo U1s?

As for the original idea, it should be interesting.

pseudonomous · 2010-03-12 04:40:11

ltpl4y3r wrote:

Also, is there a way to open up a terminal for local access, while using XDMCP? Kind of a minor detail, but it would be pretty silly to have to ssh back into the notebook I'm using to access the server...

The easiest way is probably to VT switch, but if you want to cut and paste in out of other programs this becomes less ideal; you can also run multiple X11 sessions on different VTs; this is dead simple using KDE/KDM (and probably GNOME/GDM as well) all you have to do is go to "switch user" and "start new session". Then you can start up a local X11 session on another VT terminal. But you still won't be able to cut and paste back from your other desktop session. (and the default behavior of KDE is to lock your other session when you VT switch, which is annoying, but probably can be changed)

Another option is to use "xhost", which I believe can be used to run a single application on a remote Xserver.

Personally, I think using ssh keys and a custom terminal emulator profile to autostart the ssh connection is probably the simplest way, save VT switching to get access to a local shell on your machine in a terminal emulator.

There might be other ways, but this is all I know about.

ceuric · 2010-03-18 01:11:25

Could you use ssh -X?
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SSH#X11_Forwarding

rwd · 2010-03-18 17:27:14

ssh -X isn't as bandwidth efficient as TightVNC or freenx afaik. Also I'm not sure if you can reconnect to a session when the network connection drops.

Last edited by rwd (2010-03-18 17:32:47)

Arch Linux

#1 2010-03-10 03:12:32

Idea: Two Netbooks and a Server

#2 2010-03-10 04:11:33

Re: Idea: Two Netbooks and a Server

#3 2010-03-10 04:49:18

Re: Idea: Two Netbooks and a Server

#4 2010-03-10 13:34:41

Re: Idea: Two Netbooks and a Server

#5 2010-03-10 14:00:07

Re: Idea: Two Netbooks and a Server

#6 2010-03-10 14:47:47

Re: Idea: Two Netbooks and a Server

#7 2010-03-10 15:58:00

Re: Idea: Two Netbooks and a Server

#8 2010-03-10 15:58:40

Re: Idea: Two Netbooks and a Server

#9 2010-03-10 19:40:05

Re: Idea: Two Netbooks and a Server

#10 2010-03-10 20:33:00

Re: Idea: Two Netbooks and a Server

#11 2010-03-12 04:40:11

Re: Idea: Two Netbooks and a Server

#12 2010-03-18 01:11:25

Re: Idea: Two Netbooks and a Server

#13 2010-03-18 17:27:14

Re: Idea: Two Netbooks and a Server

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