JasonM

Hi Bill, The CMOV instruction set was never part of the official i686 instruction set, but almost every CPU manufacturer included it except Via in some of their i686 chips. I'm guessing that you have a VIA EPIA 5000 or similar board? I worked on this problem as part of the CentOS QA dev team a few years ago. In the end you just have to use a kernel compiled (or re-compiled) for the i586 instruction set (as this will not attempt to use it) If you can get an i585 version then you might also want to use the: "noauto" and "noapic" kernel options. JasonM

It doesn't matter really. Larger sites will often have a dedicated broker server, but in a smaller environment it is possible to have the broker installed on one of your ts boxes. In a 3 server example where box1 is TS and Broker, and Boxes2 and 3 are just TS it wouldn't matter which server you hit first, they would just get redirected as necessary via the broker on Box1 (if required). In summary: - As long as you have a working broker, it doesn't matter which box it lives on. - The broker role can be installed alongside the "normal" TS/RDS role. JasonM

No software solution running on the PC is ever going to be able to monitor the actual power usage of the PC. Firstly, you can only ever monitor this on the "mains plug" side of the power supply to do it accurately and take into account the relative efficiency/loss of the PSU itself. Secondly, it would be impossible for the software to monitor how much power it was using whilst in standby, hibernation or sleep when it actually IS in standby, hibernation or sleep. Thirdly, the constant polling/monitoring of any such software might keep the PC "active" so it can't ever become idle and drop into standby, hibernation or sleep. The simplest, lowest-tech option is to buy a small power meter (£10 quid from Maplin) and monitor devices throughout the day, or just reset the kWh counter at the start of the week and measure it again at the end of the week. I would also suggest connecting the power meter to a two-way, four-way or six-way extension lead so that you can measure it with a CRT/TFT monitor if required, or measure small groups of devices together (for a more accurate average). Once you have got the calculations you can use the advanced carbon calculator linked in this post: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/green-computing/71862-decent-carbon-calculator.html ...to work out energy used/wasted by Cost, kWh and Metric Tonnes of carbon (for CRC or CSR purposes). Once you have done this you need to add on another 1Watt for every 3Watts of computer usages to account for any cooling/aircon required to remove the heat (if you actually have aircon that is). This is based on an assumption that most aircon units operate at 300% efficiency (which several air-con engineers have confirmed to me as a good rule-of-thumb) Anyhow..What are you going to use the figures for once you have them? JasonM

If you still have these I would suggest that you look at converting them into virtual desktops for use with Terminal Services 2003 or Remote Desktop Services 2008. You would need to buy a TS or RDS cal for each user (under £3 per user last time I checked), and you should be able to get at least another 5-10 years out of them. And yes...the energy savings over running traditional PCs will easily cover the cost of a new Terminal Server to run them. As long as the machines have a 400Mhz CPU and at least 32Mb/64Mb of RAM, these machines are still useable. JasonM

2 Quick questions: 1) Have you tried adding a forward slash e.g. /pxelinux.0 . What kind of TFTP server are you using? Do you have RIS or any other kind of Windows deployment services running (RIS/ProxyDHCP can sometimes interfere with "normal" DHCP/TFTP process) 2) What audio chipset does the Acer revo have? I might be able to compile a module for you if you can tell me what driver you need, or post me a device I can play with in the lab. JasonM

I had a chat this morning with a mate at the NCC about VDI in general. He did a straw poll of the audience at a VDI event in November last year and less than 10% of the audience (which were mostly IT managers or IT directors) were considering, or working on a VDI solution. He just got the first batch of spending and strategy surveys back this week, and said that out of the first batch that they have been working on, every single response placed desktop virtualisation in the top three priorities for organisations this year. JasonM

Hi, If you want to use 2008 session broker with TS you need to include the rdesktopsvn package. It fixes several cursor issues, USB redirection issues and crashes when redirecting from one server to another. I made the changes on an in-house linux distribution that we maintain internally, tested it for a few weeks, then back-ported the fixes into what became the rdesktopsvn package in TS in 222d in April 2010, then 222e and 222f. My changes have now been fully integrated into TS and Trevor now maintains the package since 222g (released today). I also back-ported some hardware-based load balancing code that we use here into TS last year, though this is not in any of their mainstream builds yet. For simpler/smaller installations this code can be used as a replacement for a dedicated 2008 broker. Just drop me a line if you need any more info. JasonM

Hi, I am one of the TS developers (have been since about 2005). A couple of points to consider: Wireless is pretty simple to do with WPA/WPA2 on TS (I wouldn't touch WEP though for obvious security reasons). If the laptops have Intel Centrino ABG wireless cards, I would first replace them with an Atheros card (from about £6 on ebay and usually just one or two screws to remove from the underside of the laptop and a PCI or MINI-PCI card to swap out). The Intel ABG cards require additional drives and a software daemon running in the background to function correctly. Most Atheros cards work nicely with the MadWifi module in TS (so don't forget to include it). My biggest concern with this (although I have done this for schools before) is that: a) It is a wireless solution? And any additional latency and contention that you introduce into your network will be noticed by students in terms of screen refreshes and updates and students copying large files via USB redirection which could imapct others on the same access point. b) You have to store your WPA/WPA2 key inside the image (as you cant get it off the network untill you are on the network). This makes it easier to find/steal and also means you can't change it on the Access Points without re-imaging each device. Installing locally to the laptop is no problem (I wrote the TS HDD installer with TechFan a few years back). Just give us a shout if you need any more help. JasonM