linux servers

does anyone use a linux or simila server in a school or college if so what os are you using and what are you running on the server


thanks

I think you'll get a lot of responses to this thread but before I left my school we were running a mixture of Debian and Centos boxes serving web content mostly and providing isolated containers for development work.

Our base machines are all Xen, so a scary Redhat speciality, with Windows guests. Firewall is IPcop (CentOS variant) and VLE is CentOS 4.

If I had my way they'd be Debian, but I'm biased because I maintain parts of it and we have a beautiful package manager called apt.

The majority of our Linux servers are now standardised on Ubuntu. Long-term support, great package management, relatively light-weight, and it works.

Other Linux boxes are self-contained distros - IPCop and OpenFiler which have their roots in RedHat and CentOS I believe.

Ubuntu: Email (Zimbra), 2x Web servers (website + other apps), Misc fileserver for IT Support, Student Web & FTP server
IPCop: Filtering proxy server
OpenFiler: NAS for backups

We have a Dabian Distro which is for a student proxy, running dansguardian
(with GUI)

and

We have a Linux Server running CentOS for a webserver. (No GUI)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by marktoulson

what os are you using and what are you running on the server

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We have 10 machines running CentOS providing Xen to run a bunch of assorted virtual machines - Windows Server 2003/2008 and Ubuntu 7.04 to 8.10. The Ubuntu VMs are file servers, web servers, gateway, library server (Koha), Moodle. The Windows VMs are DC, print server and an applications server (anti-virus and Sibelius license server). We also have a separate server being a LTSP server for the prep school, a couple of two-workstation Userful Multiplier machines and I'm planning on a 6-workstation Edubuntu 8.04 NComputing machine. The two IT rooms, individual sixth form study rooms and admin staff have Windows XP workstations and there's a four-workstation Windows Server 2003 NComputing machine in the staffroom. Several pupils bring in their own PC / Mac laptops.

--
David Hicks

We currently have 2 Fedora boxes, a smoothie box and a Ubuntu/Zimbra box

Though not for much longer :(

FreeBSD7.0 box running cPanel / WHM and some custom ffmpeg stuff for on the fly FLV encoding.

We have 3 virtual servers running Ubuntu (various versions) to serve up our helpdesk (RT by BestPractical), Nagios, Cacti, OCS-NG, and our school website and intranet.

We are currently in discussion over whether to move to a linux install for client machines, which would most likely be Edubuntu running via LTSP.

Use FreeNAS for our NAS box - getting another 2 boxes to do this as well.

Also use Ubuntu with a Squid install and our own custom whitelist filtering system for students.

We have several linux servers, mostly for web and fileserving.

Mythtv/ Mythweb for recording TV and Streaming TV shows - Ubuntu
Webserver / database server (LAMP + Moodle) - Centos
Student File server (samba) - RedHat Enterprise
Shared File Server IT file server (samba) - RedHat Enterprise
Student Email Server (zimbra) - Centos
Virtual machine host and nagios server - Centos
Terminal server (experimental LTSP) and TFTP server - Ubuntu
email spam antivirus filter and relay (SpamAssassin) - Centos
Proxy server - Smoothwall

Debian all the way for me - I run CUPS/PyKota for print serving and have a box running GLPI, OCS-NG and Nagios too.

I won't count the XenServer boxes, Navaho MediaCats and Smoothwall UTM since they are heavily customised.

'm also playing with Solaris with a view to introducing Sun Rays (and the Sun Storage 7110s that I have run a customised version of Solaris).

We run all our production stuff here on RedHat Enterprise, mainly v5 but have some older stuff that is still v4. Development boxes tend to run Debian and we've got some shiny new Sun X4540s which run Solaris 10. *nix boxes here far outnumber servers running Windows.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dhicks

We have 10 machines running CentOS providing Xen to run a bunch of assorted virtual machines - Windows Server 2003/2008 and Ubuntu 7.04 to 8.10. The Ubuntu VMs are file servers, web servers, gateway, library server (Koha), Moodle. The Windows VMs are DC, print server and an applications server (anti-virus and Sibelius license server). We also have a separate server being a LTSP server for the prep school, a couple of two-workstation Userful Multiplier machines and I'm planning on a 6-workstation Edubuntu 8.04 NComputing machine. The two IT rooms, individual sixth form study rooms and admin staff have Windows XP workstations and there's a four-workstation Windows Server 2003 NComputing machine in the staffroom. Several pupils bring in their own PC / Mac laptops.

--
David Hicks

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do you use a gui on your centOS servers

Quote:

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Originally Posted by marktoulson

do you use a gui on your centOS servers

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Only for the couple that are running Windows VMs, and only so I can debug Windows startup issues via a VNC client on the machine. In daily use I simply connect to each server with SSH, and I have a monitoring script that connects via SSH every 10 minutes or so to get things like free disk space and so on.

--
David Hicks