[Thinlinc-technical] Server IP address changes

[Peter Astrand]

On Sat, 20 Jul 2013, Tobias Oetiker wrote:

>> 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

There's also a mechanism in the client which allows you to "translate" IPs 
and names. It's called HOST_ALIASES and is documented here: 
http://www.cendio.com/resources/docs/tag/clientconf.html

We have considered adding a special feature for the case with a single 
server: https://www.cendio.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4228

But obviously this is not a generic solution which would work with a 
cluster with multiple machines.


Rgds, 
---
Peter Astrand		ThinLinc Chief Developer
Cendio AB		http://cendio.com
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