Comments regarding the initial paraguayian deployment, i'm not very familiar with the current status
Regarding distros, when the initial setup was made, the XS (fedora based) schoolserver was the only straightforward instalation that could have anything working with not so much tampering, and was pretty automatic, so XS was chosen, I'm a regular sysadmin, and i got the thing working given enough research time, and martin's help.. is not always like that.. we must take into account that there are not many people that could get an XS working on any given distro, and although there are many volunteers (like bernie) who go around the world doing this things, sustainability is very far away. If there is a distro, or many distros, is not the real problem, the real problem is that there needs to be a simple straightforward and automatic way to deploy a schoolserver without needing a masters in computer science, or even a deegree at all. It has to be fast and it has to be simple. In Plan Ceibal worked fine using debian, because they have specialized people that can do the develpment and can do the maintenance, not because the chose this or that distro In Paraguay, Fedora was chosen for the same reasons, it was the fastest way to get things done, and the simple way to sustain it in the long term, with XS and Fedora patches, which I don't know if were made later on. > == Jabber == I don't really understand much how collaboration works, so, no comments > == Backups == > This numbers make sense to paraguay deployment but may not make sense to other deployments, so I'll explain the folders that I remember > 262M backup Backup folder, where all data that was going to be rsynced to the datacentes was stored, it would amount to a backup of the plone, the databases, some configs, and other stuff > 3.4M games This was a folder where a web based game was going to be stored, this would be published by the apache web server > 1.7M orug Same as before, it was a game developed by a paraguayian legal team to help kids learn about thir rights > 62M pgsql-xs I don't remembre > 67M uploads The PAFM web folder discussed leter > 238G users The datastores folder > 20K webcontenido The apache default webpage, with specialized links for games, activities and others > 17M xs-activation > 516M xs-activity-server > 827M xs-rsync I don't remember > 2.7G zope-var Since plone works with a "selfcontained" filesystem for its webpage, this _single_ file was going to be backed up to the datacenter as well, i think this is the folder, but i remember that it had to go to the backup folder anyways > The feasibility of remote backups varies depending on how much we care > to backup. In Paraguay, it was decided that the journal backups are to > be considered a valuable if we are to instill the idea in teachers that > the laptop is the same of a notebook with homework on it. > > Journal backups, however, amount to a whopping 238GB of rapidly > changing, mostly uncompressible and undeltable data. Quite not the ideal > case for an incremental backup. With today's available resources, we > could afford to backup everything *but* the journals. This problem is more related to the way the journal stores the files and the metadata, I remember little about it, but the main problem with backing up a laptop is no just about taking files, any single file in the datastore doesn't get you a back up, you have to take the whole datastore folder. Incremental, or differential backups could be made if the datastore treated the files differently, I'm sorry if I hurt some suceptibilities, but is the truth, there's no simple way to back up _just the data_ from the journal, you back it all or nothing, because _part of it_ is useless. I don't know if that improved in the newer version, but 0.82 (i think) is the one that was used in Paraguay, is like that > Yesterday Daniel Castelo and I discussed the idea of performing > cross-backups between nearby schools. This solution would probably work > well in terms of bandwidth distribution, but it would bring some > logistic complexity. Probably an acceptable trade-off. This an interesting idea, and is related to the sustainability part of the deployment, and XS Deploying a schoolserver should be made easy, this would help small deployments and big deployments, the faster the server gets to the school the better, we all know that, but the real advantage is when maintenance can be made from remote or with simple and fast solutions, like puppet, CFEngine, or even self conained rpm/deb packages, becuase this is the way that we get the masters in computer scince in every schoolserver we want. The faster that a schoolserver can be install, and for the matter reinstalled and restore the better, because then you would only need to send a guy (not a sysadmin) to go, insert a CD, next, next, next, voila.. even when changes need to be done.. they should be done in the way that can be applyed to the Installation CD (or installation procedure) rather then installing, and later updating with remote control Remote control is the best solution for problems to be solved in real time, or for deploying new content when an XS is already installed and working, but there could be other ways Paraguay in that sense did something really cool.. install the schoolserver _in house_, update it and send it to the field, but in the fild had to go somebody that could make the adjustments for the network to work, and that simple task was very difficult sometimes, and updating the leases and content when no conection is available is not fun either. > == Content management == > > Paraguay seems quite happy with Plone, but frankly I can't understand The plone deployment was based on a decision to give the schools a simple CMS, not simple in deployment, but simple in using, using a plone CMS to create content is super friendly, but in time, none of the teachers or students got to used it (simple or not) > why. Teachers heavily use a really simple php tool called PAFM, which > provides basic hierarchical file management with no access control or > versioning. They used this tool instead because they learned how to use it during teachyer training, and they like it, it had an issue that once with access you could delete your co-workers files, but they used it anyways > Oddly, I've not yet may anyone using Moodle. When I ask why, I always > hear some vague comment about it being designed for higher education. > Same goes for Schooltool. These more structured tools probably present > an steeper learning curve and a bad fit for unsophisticated requirements > of users who are being exposed to information systems for the first > time. I guess this is related to the teacher training nd plone as well, they just didn't get to use it, i don't want to talk about complexity, but i think is more related to usage rather > > After they have functioning backups, Uruguay would like to provide a > wiki. They have already looked at Dokuwiki, with which I'm not familiar. > It seems to have a readable and easy to learn Creole-like syntax. I > would personally recommend going either for the simplest possible wiki > in this category, or straight to Mediawiki--the most feature-complete > out there. When a CMS was proposed, and later plone was accepted, i recomended dokuwiki, but for personal reasons i have to say, i have experience with dokuwiki, and deployment, updating, backup and other stuff is super fast (because it doesn't use a database, uses text files and folder schemes), but a being a wiki, is not as friendly to the newbie, because of the special syntax and all > == Server management tools == > > Paraguay uses Puppet. We're very happy with it. > Uruguay uses CFengine. They seem to be very happy with it as well. > > Both employ a flat hierarchy with one puppet master controlling all the > schools, which is simple and straightforward, but requires excellent > connectivity. I would advocate for this tools anytime, anywere.. but the conectivity is an issue, specially for places were the laptop is intended to go. The idea of the schoolserver should be of a _standalone_ and autonomous with simple yet friendly solutions to help improve class Internet is a luxury that Uruguay has because of a deployment politics that thay have (or so i read somewhere). Paraguay has internet, not because of a goverment desicion but rather because of the good resource movilzation, finding the sponsors that will give the internet, becuase of the projects public exposure If i think about what deplying in rwanda, uganda or even tibet, where the laptop is intended to go. There is no internet there, so their experience should point us to some key features that need to be included in the schoolserver I'm sorry this got so long, but there was plenty to be said.. :-) -- Rodolfo D. Arce S. -- Rodolfo D. Arce S. www.rodolfoarce.com _______________________________________________ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
