-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 02-11-2004 22:28, Finn-Arne Johansen wrote: > On Tue, Nov 02, 2004 at 08:01:04PM +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
>>>workstation - Actually this is more like a Multimedia workstation, >>> because everything is installed, and since we dont care about the >>> license cost why bother to diffrentiate? >> >>I have had the situation of unequal hardware for workstations: Some >>machines are great for some tasks, but too slow for other tasks. >> >>Not installing slow tasks on slow machines is the simplest way to help >>teachers and students choose the proper machines for a task. > > > Well, slow machines should be used as Thin Clients, or dumped. You wondered if non-multimedia workstations is relevant at all. Some machines are fast enough even for streaming audio and video, but too slow for >>>Thin-client-server - basically a combination of workstation, Terminal >>> server and a boot-server >> >>For the large setups some of you aim at, I'd recommend the possibility >>to setup a pool of application servers different from boot servers. >>Or how well do Skolelinux setup multiple DHCP servers on same subnet? > > > Jonas, have you actually looked at what SKolelinux are ? No, we dont > set up multiple DHCP-server on the same subnet, we uses one dhcp-server > on the backbone, and one for each of the thin client network, and let > the one application-server for each of the thin-client network act as > application-servers. Yes, I believe I know what Skolelinux is. And as I wrote, some setups may be better off using multiple application servers than one huge catch-all server. Personally I'd rather that a hardware failure causes my setup to run on 3/4 horse power than being completely down. How would you setup multiple application servers for same subnet using Skolelinux? >>>Lessdisks - Something quite similar to LTSP, but uses debian packages >> >>[cut] >> >>> I have estimated somewhere between >>> 200-400 hours to get a working solution with debian-edu. >> >>Using Vagrant's 0.6.x or the package in Debian? > > > This estimate was in august , with what was availible then, Now with > Vagrant's 0.6.x package the estimate is maybe a bot more accurate, > around 270-300, but not including the 50+ hours I have, already put in > to the project. Hmm - I still do not understand the time count procedures. Should I include the time spent packaging lessdisks if I was to do the math? Should we include the time Vagrant puts into it? >>>FAI - well here I'm blank. I know Kurt loves it. I know it is really >>> fast in setting up new machines, and I know it supports LVM, which >>> systemimager does not. But I dont think it's usefull for updating old >>> installations. I know someone has said so, but I'm not sure. but >>> anyway, installing overagin on normal workstations should not be a >>> problem. >> >>Well, FAI is somewhere between lessdisks, preseeding and systemimager. >>The author (last I checked) uses it to initialize a cluster. If you sit >>down and spend some time tweaking the rules (clever mix of system >>variables, shell scripts, CFEngine and replacement files) you can have >>FAI auto-install whatever: Skolelinux machines, Skolelinux machines >>tweaked to use FreeNX, Lessdisks and SDM, Skolelinux in hebraic (as I >>assume that would require some tweaking). > > > well as you may not have noticed, the aim of skolelinux is to do the > tweaking in advance, so that the avarege teacher ar ecapable of setting > up the network. I noticed. As such I would rule out FAI for Skolelinux role-out. But I would advertise FAI as a very very powerful development tool for Skolelinux (and other CDDs aiming at fully automated installations): CFEngine rules (or new tasks, or whatever) can easily be tested in full-blown installations, and by changing a single variable the whole lot can be tested for a different target (like testing localization-config for both woody and sarge). >>Setting up FAI requires knowledge of diskless booting and of automation >>with CFEngine and similar meta-scripting, so is not for ordinary school >>teachers, but Skolelinux developers may find it ok. The core of FAI is >>itself a diskless setup - each client boots into the diskless core, and >>(normally, but everything(!) can be tweaked in FAI) the local harddrive >>is initialized and a system automatically installed and tweaked locally
