Douglas Ward wrote:
When someone travels to check their e-mail they bring the messages and
attached files back on a floppy disk (or some other storage media). People
who travel out there also bring things with them. Apparently internet cafes
in Monrovia aren't the safest places to check e-mail. We have to work with
the donated equipment that we have on hand. The budget is tight and we are
trying to stretch it as much as possible. I'd love to go with military grade
hardware or laptops but we can't afford it unfortunately.
There have been lots of good suggestions in this thread, but don't
neglect to consider sand, dust, and dirt, and their devastating effects
on computer hardware. Particularly in a true desert scenario, where you
have people walking in and out from the sandy ground (if not sand storms
actually blowing sand into where the computers are housed), this is
going to result in a much higher maintenance schedule. You'll want to
train a couple, or at best maybe a half dozen people, on how to properly
disassemble and clean a computer. If they just know to blow the sand
out from the inside of the case and how to lubricate and replace cooling
fans, you'll be a *lot* better off in the long run.
You may also consider two other concerns geared towards keeping that
hardware usable. Make a CD for them that, when inserted into a system
who's hardware is fundamentally functional, will wipe the drive and
install "your" version of linux. Make it such that this CD requires no
human interaction and is as fool proof as possible. This will hopefully
help them overcome the problem of "computers in the closet that no one
knows how to fix". You may also want to consider explaining (or better
yet scripting up) some rudimentary backup procedures, so that they're
not too devastated by having to use the "reinstall" procedure just
previously mentioned. Something as simple as copying the contents of
the home directory, or directories, or at least the critical UN
reporting files, off to a floppy or appropriately-sized media. Another
idea could be setting up a redundant distributed home directory
structure on the available machines, such that as long as X number of
machines are still alive, and connected, the home directories will
remain available (think network-raid, perhaps with DRBD or one of the
network-filesystem versions such as I think coda is capable of this?).
This may be a bit technically challenging, and hard to get going if you
don't have much lead time. The previously-mentioned simpler solution
(copy to floppy) is probably the better solution.
I suppose it goes w/o saying that you should limit root access to these
machines. That's one of the nicest things about linux in an environment
where you don't trust the users. You can actually prevent them from
breaking it. :)
Best of luck in what sounds like a very fun, and very ambitious project!
Aaron S. Joyner
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