Hi
All
I
am converting the lab of my children's primary school with 35 motley old
donated
machines from Windows to Edubuntu. They are mostly
PII 266 MHz
and
Celeron 333 MHz with 64MB RAM. We will buy a new machine for a single
server, and get switches with
two Gigabit ports for the server and 100 Mbps for
the thin terminals.
I
teach electronic engineering (digital signal processing) at UJ, and although
computers are not my speciality, I am
comfortable building up and installing PCs.
I
have supported networks of ten or so machines
in a Windows environment.
However,
I am a complete Linux newbie.
I
have followed Linux since 1994, and always thought it a Good Idea to
try it out.
The compelling reason to
actually do so now, was that the school contacted me
last
month to join others and sponsor the replacement
of one machine in the lab.
The
current PCs will not run Windows XP
or Office XP, and they feel left behind.
Having
gone through the upgrade cycle more than once, knowing the schlepp of
supporting
many machines (software especially), and considering any current
entry
level PC to be way overspec for use as a
learner workstation, I started
searching
the web. When I found Edubuntu, it clicked immediately.
Reading on the website: "As
an educator you'll be able to set up a computer lab,
or establish an online learning environment, in
an hour or less -- then administer
that environment without having to become a
fully-fledged Linux geek," I thought
this
was going to be a piece of cake. It wasn't.
I
spent many hours reading web documents, including the Ubuntu and Edubuntu
I
have even lurked in the IRC room, which
I have to do from home, because
my
employer blocks IRC access on the campus.
Downloading and
installing Edubuntu LTSP server on a test
machine proved
to
be the easy part. Getting all the thin clients
to work is still a headache.
Thank
you for everyone involved with Edubuntu. I believe it is an excellent
project,
and considering its age, remarkably mature. However, it might be
better
to manage down some expectations. Many of my problems probably
originate
upstream from the Edubuntu itself, but that
doesn't help me.
So
here are some of my current issues, first hardware related:
Terminal
booting:
My Dell laptop with PXE
network card boots flawlessly after invoking
the
Boot Menu with F12 and choosing onboard NIC as boot device.
The old (c.1998) motherboards' BIOS would not recognize a PXE NIC
program and now boot from floppy (hopefully an interim measure).
This program finds and works with a variety of network cards.
*** A network card with Asix chip AX88140 only gets halfway through
the boot process, then freezes after
giving the following message:
"[4294684.802000] eth0: Setting full-duplex based on MII#1 link
partner capability of 45e1."
I have 22 of these cards, so a solution would be appreciated.
Video
card:
*** A generic S3 Trio 64+ card seems not to be recognized.
The text terminals are fine, but X goes into black and white mode.
Can I specify the video card in a configuration file?
Mouse:
The serial mouse, and on some motherboards the PS/2 mouse
Add a line with the word psmouse in the kernel modules file.
I used the text editor nano in a terminal:
$ sudo nano /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/modules
Newer
hardware seems to be well supported, but the whole point of
recycling
old PCs as thin terminals is missed if they will not work.
Hardware
for the server is not entirely trivial either. As the school was
looking
to replace 35 machines, I can consider a high end server.
should
not exceed the price of 5-10 new entry level machines:
Dual 64 bit Xeon/Athlon M/B, cheapest processors, 4 GB ECC RAM
dual Gigabit LAN, RAID-5 SCSI disks, DVD writer for backup,
UPS.
Supporting
more than 10 or 20 terminals with a single machine seems
to
put some strain on ordinary workstation hardware posing as a server.
A software
question: How do you load hundreds of learner accounts
on Edubuntu? What
about password generation? I could get a machine
readable
file with their particulars from the current school
administration
system.
What about user groups for every class in order to deal with
age
differences? Is there a tool for this? I can't find any in Edubuntu.
Another
software issue: For political reasons I may have to use
Wine to allow for the use of legacy
Windows software :-(
or
have all the machines dual boot into Windows 98.
Has
anyone used Wine with MS Word and Powerpoint? Version?
I
know OpenOffice is AsEasyAs, but the decision is not mine.
Hopefully
this will be transient.
Lastly,
does Edubuntu have posters to liven up a computer lab? Ours
currently
reminds me of a jail cell, with the iron
bars, small windows
high
up on the wall, and all that
computer beige sitting on the workbench.
How about
bright stickers for the cases?
I
am determined to have our lab up and running when the new school
year starts in
January, even if I have to buy video and network cards
and
program the bootROMs.
Thanks
for any feedback & input.
Hendrik Boshoff
Department of Electrical & Electronic
Engineering
University of Johannesburg
Hi Hendrik,