[Thinlinc-technical] Server IP address changes

[Tobias Oetiker]

Hi Leigh,

Yesterday Leigh Porter wrote:

> Hiya All,
>
> I have a thinlinc server on three subnets, one local for local
> thinlinc clients, one subnet for remote VPN access and another
> that connects to an MPLS VPN across various other networks.
>
> When clients on the local LAN connect all works fine. But when
> clients connect over the remote VPN subnet or the MPLS VPN, the
> IP address I connect to on the client is correct but then is
> seems to change to trying to connect to the LAN subnet instead.
>
> Why does it not just connect to the IP address I specify in the
> client?
>
> This behaviour seems odd and is really annoying. If I tell it
> what address to connect to, it really should just connect to that
> and not some other IP address on the same host.

the reason for this behaviour is, that you do not connect to the
server, but to the agent who then decides which one of your
thinlinc servers has the least load or is already running one of
your sessions and then sends you there.

By default the agent just uses the ip address of the server. For
multi-homed hosts and also in connection with ipv4/ipv6 setups this
does not work so well.

The solution is to tell vmsagent the host name of your thinlinc
server and then make sure the client resolves the hostname to the
right ip ... if dns does not give the right response, you can add
the name to /etc/hosts OR you could even add an entry to ~/.thinlinc/config
which is the ssh_config file used by the thinlinc client.

  tl-config /vsmagent/agent_hostname=myserver.mydomain.com

hth
tobi

-- 
Tobi Oetiker, OETIKER+PARTNER AG, Aarweg 15 CH-4600 Olten, Switzerland
http://it.oetiker.ch tobi at oetiker.ch ++41 62 775 9902 / sb: -9900