I'm working on a project with a number of high-school kids from 
Littleton Public Schools at one of the elementary schools.  Its an 
after school project where we build computers with donated (read: 
busted and old) parts.  Lately we've started a second project based 
around the LTSP project.  The idea is to build cheap, easy to admin 
labs out of Linux and spare computer parts.  One of the areas we are 
working on is administration.  Most of the people running labs in 
schools tend to have very little computer knowledge, and have a 
serious time doing decent administration.  LTSP gets us around part 
of the problem--its a lot easier to administer one server than 30-40 
individual boxes.  However, what we need is a set of very simple 
administration tools that are extremely easy to use (this will have 
to include install and setup).  Is there already a project in the 
works?  If not, we are planning to create a SourceForge project and 
begin the development of these tools.  We plan to start with the 
development of simple Perl scripts to retrieve data from and 
manipulate data in the different config files (and restart services 
and good things like that).  Of course, that won't be easy enough for 
the vast majority of school admins to make them want to use the 
system.  Since most of these admins use Windows, there must be an 
overwhelming reason for them to switch (at least in their labs). 
They will not want to learn new tools, and the more cryptic those 
tools, the less likely they will want to use this system (after all, 
they don't have that much time in th efirst place).  So, the second 
step would be to build easy to use GUI tools (think dumbed down but 
powerful) that sit on top of the scripts and use them for all 
interaction.  I have a theoretically step three and four that would 
involve SNMP, but that is to far off in the distance to discuss at 
this point.  Is this of interest to anyone?  If it is, please contact 
me.  We meet Mondays, so I would like to have some basic information 
on community reaction so we can begin forging the plans for the next 
couple months.

Thanks for your interest,
-- 

Jared McIntyre
Deep Fried Software
Deep Fried LLC
Owner/Engineer
http://www.dfsoftware.com
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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