New Student USI issue - AUSKey, CentOS6.4, LTSP, Firefox 45.3, Java 8u101

[Paul Mulroney]

Hi Everyone,

First time post, hope someone can help.

- CentOS 6.4, kernel 2.6.32

- Firefox ESR 45.3.0

- If you go java -version from the command line you get 'java version "1.8.0_66"'

- If you go to java.com in the browser, it reports "Your Java version: Version 8 Update 101". weird.

- LTSP 5.2.17

My client is a training organisation and is creating Student USI (Unique Student Identifiers) on behalf of it's students.  They are starting to ramp up the number of staff doing these at once, and they're encountering issues. 

The biggest one at the moment is that sometimes when they go through the create USI process, the browser window greys out, the status bar says "waiting for response from the server", and then the workstation hangs.  Some workstations are fine, others are not.  It appears that the more powerful ones seem to work more often, and the slowest ones never work.

I'm not sure where to go for help on this issue.  Can anyone offer some suggestions about where I can go with this?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Paul.

[Patrick Webster]

Is this related to AUSKey?

FWIW, my.gov.au now integrates with ATO so I haven't needed to use an
AUSKey for about a year or so.

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[Paul Mulroney]

USI uses the AUSKey to validate it's users.

Regards,

Paul

[Murray Jensen]

1. why such old versions of kernel, centos, and Firefox? (maybe update your ltsp)
2. looks like your browser is finding a Java plugin that is different to your installed Java - you should fix that (probably using a plugin package from the distribution rather than the plugin from the installed Java)
3. when you say the workstation hangs, do you mean hard lockup or is it just the X session / window manager? e.g. can you use ctl-alt-f1 to switch to a different console?
4. where are you getting your installed Java from?
can't help with your specific problem but answers to the above may (or may not) help. Cheers!
Murray...

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[Paul Mulroney]

Hi Murray,

Thanks for your message - great questions!

1. why such old versions of kernel, centos, and Firefox? (maybe update your ltsp)

This is an old install.  It's been working flawlessly for 6 years now.  It's only that they want to start creating USIs that we've had issues.

CentOS6 if the latest that LTSP works with (reliably).  Firefox 45 is the current version for CentOS6. I could install a more recent Firefox, but it would be a manual install.

I've looked into updating LTSP, and it seems that's not a good idea - the RedHat version of LTSP is quite old and not kept up-to-date.  Migrating to other linux distros looks to be a bit painful.

2. looks like your browser is finding a Java plugin that is different to your installed Java - you should fix that (probably using a plugin package from the distribution rather than the plugin from the installed Java)

Not sure how to do that. From a recommendation I found elsewhere, I installed "IcedTea-Web" which is some kind of Java applet/plugin manager.  With this installed, I was able to get Firefox to recognise Java and get the AUSKey installed without issues.

I noticed there's another java update since I last installed java, so I could probably just update java and remove the old packages and see what happens.

3. when you say the workstation hangs, do you mean hard lockup or is it just the X session / window manager? e.g. can you use ctl-alt-f1 to switch to a different console?

I haven't tried ctl-alt-f1, but it appears that the workstation just freezes, and no key combo (except ctrl-alt-backspace, which terminates the session), seems to release it.

Firefox seems to grey out the window and show an animated graphic (rotating spinner of some description), and that seems to take forever to do.  I know that my LTSP setup doesn't really handle any sort of graphics acceleration, so it may be just struggling to render the "fade out" and that's what's causing the lockup.

4. where are you getting your installed Java from?

I downloaded the RPM from the java.com website.

Thanks for your help!

Regards,

Paul.

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[Murray Jensen]

"It's been working flawlessly for 6 years now.  It's only that they want to start creating USIs that we've had issues." ... I think that's your easy answer right there - if you want it to continue to work flawlessly, then don't mess with it.

however, I guess that's not particularly helpful :-) so ...

1. OK you can't update then ... (you will have security issues at some point though ... e.g http://betanews.com/2016/10/22/dirty-cow-linux-vulnerability/ - but if it is a closed system then you might get away with it).

2. yes try that.

3. if ctrl-alt-bs works then the machine is not dead hung ... my guess is that the window manager has hung or crashed. try a different window manager or a different desktop session (I have found xfce4 to be fast and reasonably reliable - at least the latest versions).

also disable things like fade-out etc (animations) on remote sessions - and even things like showing window contents while moving.

4. get the latest Java - I always use the Oracle one (not sure why, just being a bit pedantic I think)

Good luck :-) Cheers!

Murray...

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[Paul Mulroney]

Hi Murray,

Thanks for your message. 

1. I'll be working towards getting them updated.  I'm planning to make a snapshot of the server so I can see if I can bring the whole thing up to date.

2. Will do

3. I'll give that a go.  One piece of software we use on that system is particularly sensitive to the window manager being used.  I'll see if we can switch to xfce4, and I'll see if we can disable animations on remote sessions.

4. I'll do the Java update while I'm updating everything else.

Once again, thanks for the feedback - it's good to know that I'm not the only Linux user out there :)

Regards,

Paul.