(EN) Sun Ray Case Study : Mie University

Today's content is a case study of Sun Ray Systems at Mie university.

Recently in Japan, thin client systems are receiving much attention from media and universities.

Sun Ray is one of the famous thin client systems, which have some feature as follow.

• No noise
• Low power consumption
• Security
• Ease of Management
• TCO

• libusb support

This Sun Ray system is used for educational use in some classes on Mie University Information Engineering Department. This system consists of 81x Sun Ray 1g, Sun Ray servers, computing servers and some service servers. The system has been operating since this April. The photograph on left side is the computer room of Mie University Information Engineering Department. There are two Sun Ray 1g and 17inch LCD monitors on each desk. One desk is shared by two students. The LCD monitor of the center is used to display teacher's material. I think that the size of Sun Ray 1g is very compact, so they can put 3rd LCD monitors on the desk. the third monitor might not have been able to be put on under PC workstation environment.

Mie University Information Engineering Department has EDA classes. In these classes, students design electric circuits with CAD and test it on FPGA board. FPGA board is AX-USB, which manufactured by Prime Systems Inc,. (Their site is written in Japanese only!!) The photograph on right side is AX-USB with Sun Ray 1g on Mie University. This AX-USB board connects to PCs with USB interface. Users can download data and operate board from their PC. At first, support platform of AX-USB was Windows only, so this board could not use on Sun Ray environment. Therefore, in this matter, Prime Systems Inc, developed FPGA control software using libusb. Libusb is the opensource libraries to use USB device directly. Libusb supports Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS X and so on, and Sun ported libusb to Solaris 8+. (Libusb for Solaris 8+ is include in Sun Ray Server Software 3.0. It is not include in Solaris 8 and 9.) FPGA software was developed on Linux environment first, and ported to Sun Ray environment. And now, Prime Systems Inc, announced it in their Press Release

A student, who is in the photograph of left side, was doing exercise using AX-USB(FPGA board) with Sun Ray. I heard that other students do it like him. A book under the keyboard is a text book of the class.

Finally, on another note, the photograph of right side is very interesting. This is a web application that displays a seat table of the computer room. This application was developed by a staff at Mie university. Sun Ray Server Software has some administration commands to check Sun Ray client information. e.g. Login ID, Mac address of Sun Ray client, and so on. A staff at Mie university developed this web application using these commands.

References :

• Mie University
• Mie University Information Engineering Department
• Prime Systems Inc,.

Posted at 01:35午後 10 17, 2005 by Yasuhiro Fujitsuki in Linux & Solaris(EN)  |  投稿されたコメント[0]

(EN) NVIDIA GeForce on Solaris 10 x86

Support platform of graphics driver of nvidia for Solaris 10 x86 are Quadro series. This driver also work on NVIDIA GeForce platform well. But, you have to update driver information to use NVIDIA's driver on Solaris 10 x86 with GeForce series.

The way to update driver information and install NVIDIA's driver is as follows.

First, install driver and reboot. You can download NVIDIA's driver from NVIDIA : http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html.
After install graphics driver (execute download file), copy /etc/X11/xorg.conf.nvidia to /etc/X11/xorg.conf, if your environment does not have /etc/X11/xorg.conf.
On default environment, you can use SXGA(1280x1024). If you want to use UXGA, you should execute /etc/X11/bin/xorgconfig to make new xorg.conf, and edit it after that.

After install driver, logon root user on Solaris 10 console mode.

Execute "/usr/X11/bin/scanpci" and get GeForce card information. The following example is case of NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200.
Use vendor ID 0x10de and device ID 0x0322 to update driver information.

# /usr/X11/bin/scanpci
...
pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1f function 0x05: vendor 0x8086 device 0x24d5
 Intel Corp. 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) AC'97 Audio Controller

pci bus 0x0001 cardnum 0x00 function 0x00: vendor 0x10de device 0x0322
 nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200]

pci bus 0x0002 cardnum 0x01 function 0x00: vendor 0x8086 device 0x1019
 Intel Corp. 82547EI Gigabit Ethernet Controller (LOM)
...

Execute "update_drv" to update driver infomation (/etc/driver_aliases) as follows.
Device name is as pciXXXX,YYY. XXXX is a vender ID and YYY is device ID. You don't have to write the first " 0 " of device ID.

# update_drv -a -i '"pci10de,322"' nvidia

Finally, execute " reboot " command with re-configuration option.

# reboot -- -r

Posted at 10:36午前 8 15, 2005 by Yasuhiro Fujitsuki in Linux & Solaris(EN)  |  投稿されたコメント[1]

(EN) gftp

JDS has ftp command, but GUI frontend of ftp client. Many users do not need ftp GUI frontend. But, I think GUI frontend is very useful for all users include experts.

So, today's blog is about GUI frontend for linux which name is 'gftp'.
Gftp distribute on http://gftp.seul.org/.
Gftp is run on gtk 1.2 environment and gtk 2.x environment. Installation is very simple, just ./configure ; make ; make install.
And gftp supports many languages in default.
Gftp is very good Free Open Source Software, simply installations, ease to use, supports local language in default.

Posted at 03:17午後 6 03, 2005 by Yasuhiro Fujitsuki in Linux & Solaris(EN)  |  投稿されたコメント[0]

(EN) xmms

Xmms is a very famous media player on Linux world.
In last blog, I introduced a media player named zinf. But, some person want to use xmms.
So, in this blog, I tntroduce the way to install xmms.

Xmms installation is easy, because xmms build system is based on automake, so you can build binary with ./configure, make , make install.
But, you cannot build xmms binary in default environment of JDS R3.

Xmms is based on gtk 1.2, and JDS R3 has gtk 1.2 and glib 1.2. So, you need gtk-devel, glib-devel packages to build xmms binary. But, these packages do not installed into JDS in default. (These package is not in 'Development Packages' group.)

These packages are in JDS R3 CD media, so you can find with search mode of Yast2. After installed gtk-devel and glib-devel, building xmms binary is so easy.

Posted at 10:06午前 5 25, 2005 by Yasuhiro Fujitsuki in Linux & Solaris(EN)  |  投稿されたコメント[2]

(EN) zinf

Default environment of JDS R3 has gtk and gtk2 libraries. XMMS is a famous multimedia player on linux world. XMMS is gtk base. In this column, I introduce zinf because zinf based on gtk2, gtk2 is a standard library on JDS R3 environment.

Zinf's source code is distributed on http://www.zinf.org/.

Zinf's installation is so easy, decompress source file, ./configure, make, and make install only.

SJIS is often used to ID3 tag in a Japanese environment, because SJIS is default code on Windows environments. So, it is very useful if zinf can read SJIS ID3 tag.
Line 328 of zinf-2.2.5/plm/metadata/id3lib/id3lib.cpp define charactor code of ID3 tag, so zinf can read SJIS charactor code when change as follows.

=========
utfbuffer=g_convert(buffer, sizeof buffer, "UTF-8", charset.c_str(), NULL, NULL, NULL);
->
utfbuffer=g_convert(buffer, sizeof buffer, "UTF-8", "SJIS", NULL, NULL, NULL);

=========

Posted at 11:08午前 5 23, 2005 by Yasuhiro Fujitsuki in Linux & Solaris(EN)  |  投稿されたコメント[0]

(EN) rdesktop 1.4.1

Rdesktop latest version 1.4.1 released.
Some new function added to rdesktop latest version.
I found following function in the Change log.

* Support for RDP-compression (all bpps)
Old version(1.4.0) cannot use this option on 16bpp/24bpp, this option work on 8bpp only. I feel this option works good.

Rdesktop can use sound with -r sound:local option, it works good when use to hear mp3 music or warning sounds, but it is not good to see flash animation, movie. It does not usually use to see these contents...

Posted at 11:15午前 5 17, 2005 by Yasuhiro Fujitsuki in Linux & Solaris(EN)  |  投稿されたコメント[2]

(EN) use Windows 2003 on rdesktop 24bit color mode

Default configuration of terminal service of Windows 2003 does not allow use 24bit color mode, allow 8/16bit color mode.
So, rdesktop -a 24 cannot run correctry. ( rdesktop output warning messages, and change itself to 16bit color mode.)

If you want to use 24bit color mode, you should change configuration of terminal services as follows. ( I do not have Windows 2003 English version, so commant/application name might be different. This information based on Windows 2003 Japanese version.)

• Open "Terminal Service Configuration (tscc)"
  [Start] -> [Administration tools(Management tools?)] -> [Terminal Service Configuration]
• Select "Connection" on the left side frame.
• Select "RDP-tcp" on the right side frame, and open "Property".
• Select "Client settings" menu on property window.
• Change color configuration to allow 24bit color.

Posted at 09:44午前 4 22, 2005 by Yasuhiro Fujitsuki in Linux & Solaris(EN)  |  投稿されたコメント[0]

(EN) Sun Ray on Vine Linux

I tried to install Sun Ray Server Software(SRSS) 3.0 to Vine Linux 3.1.
A Photograph of right side is the result.
Vine Linux is not a support platform of SRSS 3.0
Sun does not support to use SRSS and Sun Ray on Vine Linux.

Installation SRSS to Vine Linux is as follows.

1. Install following pakages. You can get these packages with apt-get, ftp site of Vine Linux/VineSeed or java.sun.com.
   It is possibility that you have to other depending packages when you install following packages.
   
   • dhcp-base-3.0.1
   • dhcp-server-3.0.1
   • openmotif-2.2.2
   • perl-XML-Parser-2.31
   • tftp
   • pdksh
   • Java 2 SDK 1.4.2
   • openldap-clients
   • ncurses-devel
2. Download procps source package, procps-2.0.17-5.src.rpm, form Fedora Legacy ftp site.And, build binary package and install it.
   When ncurses-devel was installed, you can build procps only with 'rpm --rebuild procps-2.0.17-5.src.rpm'.
   Update procps package to Fedora Legacy version with 'rpm -Uhv procps-2.0.17-5.i386.rpm'
   
3. Copy /usr/share/gdm/themes/vine to other side(e.g. /tmp).
   
4. Install Sun Ray Server Software 3.0
   In this time, SRSS installer update gdm to SRSS version of gdm.
   
5. Move copy of /usr/share/gdm/themes/vine to /usr/share/gdm/themes, Make symbolic link as follows.
   ln -s /usr/share/gdm/themes/vine /usr/share/gdm/themes/Bluecurve
   ln -s /usr/share/gdm/themes/vine/Vine.xml /usr/share/gdm/themes/Bluecurve/Bluecurve.xml
   
6. Set up SRSS with utconfig and utadm

Current known problem of SRSS with Vine Linux is key binding of 'L' key.
Workaround :
Comment out keycode setting in /etc/X11/xinit/Xmodmap as follows

!Keycode 22 = BackSpace

Posted at 11:24午前 4 01, 2005 by Yasuhiro Fujitsuki in Linux & Solaris(EN)  |  投稿されたコメント[0]

(EN) Use Windows XP Professional via rdesktop

When you want to use Windows environment via rdesktop on your personal environment or for demonstration, it is easy that you prepare Windows XP instead of Windows 2003.
When you have a Windows XP Professional (not Home), you can use Windows XP via rdesktop after set up Windows XP as followings.

• When use Windows XP Professional SP2, you have to turn off the firewall of Windows XP or you have to check remote control on exception of firewall.
• Set password of user, which you want to use via rdesktop. (Control Panel -> User Account). It is okay to set password for guest account.
• Open properties of My Computer.
• Select Remote property of My Computer and check Remote Desktop.
• Push button about Remote User, and open window for additional user. Add user account which you want to use remote.

After do that, you can use Windows XP with rdesktop, e.g. 'rdesktop -a 24 -g 1024x768 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx'.
But in Windows XP environment, you can use 1 session only.

In case of Windows 2003, if you want to play sound, you have to set up of RDP sound. But, you can use RDP sound on Windows XP via rdesktop without settings.
Just use -r sound option, e.g. rdesktop -a 24 -g 1024x768 -r sound:local xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx .

Posted at 11:07午前 3 29, 2005 by Yasuhiro Fujitsuki in Linux & Solaris(EN)  |  投稿されたコメント[0]

(EN) Swap Control Key and Caps Lock Key on JDS

Control key of Unix keyboard of Sun Workstation is next to A key. But, in case of many English keyboard and Japanese Keyboard of PC, there is caps lock key next to A key.

When I use Linux or Unix environment, I offen use Control key and I think that it is good for me Control key is next to A key.
X has a function to swap keyboard, but it is better that we can swap keyboard on console mode. The following is the way to swap Control key and Caps Lock on console mode.
If you want to swap Caps Lock and Control, you should do this way before you log on Gnome first time.

In case of JDS(Linux), keyboard information file is in "/usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwenty"
When you use Japanese keyboard, target file to rewrite is /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/jp106.map.gz

The way to swap Control key and Caps Lock key are

• su -
• cd /usr/share/kdb/keymaps/i386/qwerty
• gunzip jp106.map.gz
• vi jp106.map
• gzip jp106.map
• reboot

===== jp106.map =====

[Default]
keycode 29 = Control
keycode 58 = Caps_Lock


[Swap Control key and Caps Lock version]
keycode 29 = Caps_Lock
keycode 58 = Control

Posted at 01:43午後 3 25, 2005 by Yasuhiro Fujitsuki in Linux & Solaris(EN)  |  投稿されたコメント[0]

(EN)K3B - The CD Kreator

I sometimes burn CD-R or DVD-R to make test media and backups.
Many Linux distributions has commands like cdrtool. We can burn CD-R/DVD-R with cdrtool, but it is not easy for us.
So, the GUI front end of CD/DVD writer for linux is very useful.
X-CD-Roast(www.xcdroast.org) and Gnome CD write function are very famous. but, X-CD-Roast has a peculiar interfaces, so it is necessary to become accustomed to use, especially, if you use existed windows CD/DVD writer like B's creator

In this blog, I introduce other GUI front end of CD/DVD writer, which is K3B -the CD/DVD kreator-.
K3B is the KDE-based GUI front end of CD/DVD writer. Source code of K3B can be downloaded from www.k3b.org.
The interface of K3B is like a existed CD/DVD writer for Windows, so it is easy to use.
You can see screenshot of K3B's GUI on Screenshot page of www.k3b.org .

It is easy to install K3B if target distribution has packages of KDE. Build K3b with "./configure; make; make install" after install packages which are need by K3B like cdrtool, cdrdao, dvd+rw-tools and so on.
K3B can be used on Gnome2 environment, when your environment has libraries of KDE, but when your environemnt has no KDE, you have to install KDE environemnt to use k3b.

When you want to use K3B, you should install k3b like followings,

1. Install following packages. If you use rpm packages of SuSE Linux ftp version, you should install some other depending packages.
   • cdrdao
   • dvd+rw-tools
   • kdelib
   • kdelib-devel
   • kdemultimedia
   • kdemultimedia-dev
   • kdebase3
   • kdebase3-devel
   • mad-devel
   • id3lib
2. Update packages or build from source, when JDS has no .la libtool libraries of following packages. (You have to update when you use JDS R3 Beta.)
   • libart_lgpl
   • glib2
3. Download source packages, unpack with bunzip2 and tar command, and build and install with ./configure ; make ; make install .
   If yor environment is English only environment, you do not need to install k3b-i18n package.
   • k3b-0.11.18.tar.bz2
   • k3b-i18n-0.11.tar.bz2

Posted at 02:59午後 3 23, 2005 by Yasuhiro Fujitsuki in Linux & Solaris(EN)  |  投稿されたコメント[0]

(EN) KDE 3.4 released

KDE 3.4 released on March 16.
GUI of Sun Java Desktop(JDS) is based on Gnome 2.x, so it is probably not important for JDSD users. It is the fact that KDE is just a rival of Gnome...

I like KDE, K desktop environment. KDE is easy to use for me , and it is easy to customize desktop environments.

It is just my opinion. I think that KDE is bettern than Gnome. There are some reason that Gnome is based of JDS, but I do not talk about it.

When I get a question that "What of KDE is more excellent than that of gnome?", I will answer that "I think User Interface of KDE is better than Gnome, especially Look & Feel".
Look & Feel is very important component for client side system. I think Aqua's Look & Feel is very excellent. Aqua is a user interface of MacOS X.
Project Looking Glass (LG3D) got into the news very much. I think that reason of it is beautiful look & feel of LG3D.
So, I think that look & feel is very important component of user interface, and look & feel of KDE is better than Gnome.
We can get excellent user interface and look & feel on Gnome environment when we had customized. It is just like a JDS, JDS is a good example of customization of Gnome. I think that it is not significant when excellent look & feel is not obtained by default...

By the way, KDE latest version 3.4 released on March 16. In this release, there are some large updates, for example 6500 bugs fixed. I am interest in "Support Text to Speech", so I tried to install KDE and use Text to Speech. The photograph of right side is a screen shot of KDE on JDS R3 Beta.
I installed KDE and FreeTTS, Java based Text-to-Speech software, And, I had KDE read Jonathan's blog.;-)

JDS is based on Gnome, so JDS is not include packages of KDE and some application packages which is need by KDE. When you install KDE to JDS R3, you should install many packages. Easy way to install packages is installing rpm binary packages of SUSE linux ftp version.
And, you can get rpm binary packages of KDE for SUSE Linux.
When you use JDS R2, you should use packages for SuSE Linux 8.1/8.2. When you use JDS R3, you should use packages for SuSE Linux 9.1/9.2. I think packages for 8.1/9.1 are good for us. But, when you installed these packages, there is no support from Sun and Novell, Okay?

Posted at 05:29午後 3 21, 2005 by Yasuhiro Fujitsuki in Linux & Solaris(EN)  |  投稿されたコメント[0]

(EN) rdesktop 1.4.0 released

Rdesktop latest version (rdesktop 1.4.0) released on rdesktop.org. In mailing list archive of rdesktop developer, you can find the message from thaniwa, it's me. This fact is off-the-beaten-path on Sun Microsystems.
My work was that 24bit color mode on SPARC(big endian) machines. Current code of rdesktop 24 bit color is not my written code. ;-)
When your rdesktop is version 1.2.0 and your rdesktop has -r option, this version include my patch of 24bit color.

Rdesktop is a reverse engineering project of Matt Chapman. Rdesktop is a client application to access Windows Terminal Server.
Target environemnt is a linux, but rdesktop run on Solaris(SPARC) environment and it's can use on Sun Ray environment.
We need Windows Server machine and turn on the terminal server mode to use rdesktop. So, you think that you do not need rdesktop for your work.
But now, Windows XP has a function of terminal server, so you can display Windows XP on your linux desktop.
Windows XP limit to use 1 session of terminal server, so multiple user cannot support in this environment, but it is enough for personal works.

I think that combination of rdesktop and Sun Ray environment is very good. When you use Sun Ray environments and Windows Terminal Server environment, administrator do not have to manage client, so you can reduce administration machines. Current Windows based terminal client have to run Windows CE, so administrator have to manage terminal client, but need no administration on Sun Ray environment.
But, you should think that this usage is the way for shift of environment, Windows to Solaris/Linux environment.

My interest of latest rdesktop's new functions are as followings,

• Sound Re-direct function
• Network disk function

Rdesktop can play the sound on client machine, this sound is played on Windows server. This function does not need for work, but I think it is very interest for me.

Network disk function is very convenience(good) function. When you use rdesktop wich -r desk:home=/home/XXXXX option, you can see your local home directory of linux as network disk. Samba is unnecessary to the use of this option.

If you want to use latest version of rdesktop, you have to build from source code. This is very easy. Just ./configure; make; make install.
And, the release interval of rdesktop is very long. So, when you want to use latest function, not in latest version, you should get source codes via cvs.
Source codes via cvs does not have configure script, so you have to make configure script with automake, autoconf, and so on.

Posted at 02:02午後 3 21, 2005 by Yasuhiro Fujitsuki in Linux & Solaris(EN)  |  投稿されたコメント[0]