HP t5135 Thin Clients Freeze

[ianohr]

Hello thar:

We are a Secondary School and have over 200 HP t5135 thin clients across three sites.

We have them set to "Auto" and "Persist" an RDP connection to a local Server 2003 Terminal Server, local to each site that is. This means that it boots up, logs into it's own HP ThinConnect OS as "user", then connects an RDP session to a Terminal Server, presenting the login box. After every weekend, anything up to about 15 t5135 thin clients are frozen. The only way to restore them is to get to them with a USB Flash drive with a good image generated from another thin client.

They freeze in varying states, but the common factor is that most will not boot if you power them off and on again. This is a completely unacceptable rate of failure, and we are sorely dissappointed with the product on three counts, I don't recommend them, steer WELL clear:

1. It freezes
2. There is no tamper free Kiosk mode (We don't want the little darlings to be able to see the DNS and IP info for the thin client, we just want a big fat connect button and _nothing_ else.)
3. You can't shut them down remotely (with over 200 across 3 sites this is a lot of electricity)

The freeze appears to be related to the fact that terminal services boots you off an RDP session that you don't log in to, after about 1 minute. The Auto feature reconnects you, but after it has done this a few hundred or thousand times, the thin client slows down, then freezes. It is, at an educated guess, symptomatic of a memory leak, either in the application that lauches rdesktop, or rdesktop itself. I doubt the latter as I think that a new rdesktop process is spawned after each disconnect.

Is there anyone out there who can suggest a fix, or an easy to configure, compatible alternative OS that will install from a USB boot? Any help with anything would be greatly appreciated.

[Ric_]

Which version of the software are you using?

I found that the latest couple of versions exhibit this problem but the previous version does not.

[ianohr]

We are currently using S2ST0090 Rev. a, but we have used two or three previous versions and experienced the same problem. Do you know which version does not cause this problem. I am willing to give it a blast.

[nut-ed]

What do HP themselves say (or the reseller) - don't they provide technical support on their Linux products....?

Between them surely they must take responsibility for the problem and provide a fix - or take the devices back if they are not "fit for purpose"...

[Ric_]

I'll send a minion out tomorrow for a check on the software version.

[ssiruuk2]

You asked about an alternative OS and I have got about 40 of T5135s running 2x ThinClientServer OS (linux based) to replace the standard HP Linux build and I NEVER get a single problem with them...ever!

Plus you then get a nice easy way of shutting them down at the end of the day (sadly not automated though its a quick job) from the 2x web console.

I have used versions 4.1 and 6.x both work fine on these units. If you fancy taking a look at it then I would download the pxes version of 4.1 (free), you can boot the OS by PXE or you can install it to local flash rom on the T5135s.

[ianohr]

I'm not usually inclined to go nuts on a forum, but:

YAYAYAYAYAYYAYAYAYYAYAYAYAYA!!!!!!!

I will post back when I have tried it out. Thank you thank you thank you!

[ianohr]

I've just got v6.0.4262 on a CD ISO and have booted it on the Thin Client. I chose the install option, and it comes up with the error:

"Ditribution not found TCMR003"

How do you do the install to the internal flash memory of your thin clients? What method do you use?

[ssiruuk2]

Seriously - use 4.1 (Free edition) go to www.2x.com/downloads to find it - 6.x is not all that its cracked up to be.. I would roll mine back to 4.1 if I could (Newer T5145's cannot use 4.x from local flash drives)

1) Install the 2x TCS server software onto a server on your network (windows right?!)

2) Now - download the 2x client OS for 4.1 and upload it via the web gui when connected to 2x TCS web service on your server (http://yourservername:980)

3) Configure dhcp options (see manual but off top of my head you need options 67 66 and you need to create 197) and boot your HP T5135 from PXE and boot the 2x OS.

4) Now go and find your newly booted client in the 2x web gui and highlight it > choose install to disk

5) PXE boot the T5135 again and the installation to disk program will appear.. choose auto and it will install it to local flash rom.

6) Reboot the T5135 and change boot order in BIOS (hold F10) to boot from local flash.3

7) done! Repeat with other thin clients. (You will also need to configure the 2x web gui to interact with your AD and tell it what groups to connect to what servers (ICA/RDP)

Hope that helps

[chado]

Just stumbled on to this thread, was hoping you could help me out.

I've been attempting to revive our t5135's before they hit the closet permanently and this 2x software looks great. Question is, how do I successfully install a thinclientos from 2x onto the 64mb flash disk?

Every time I attempt to do the install, it seems to run out of space. I've been trying the compact version because that appears to be the smallest. Any advice is greatly appreciated!

We were using the t5135's in conjunction with VMware View, until we moved to vsphere and view 4 which killed thinconnect. I'd like to use 2x with Vmware view.

Thanks in advance.