Italc sorting the users on teacher's screen

[dbowen]

Hi All! First post.

I work as a technician for a high school. We've installed Italc on the library computers. It seems to work (slowly), but we can't get the teacher's station to sort the displayed user screens even though we've numbered them all carefully.

How do I get the teacher screen to sort the displayed computers in order?

thank you.

[SurfingBob]

Sadly the sorting function of iTalc is kind of wonky but there are work arounds. Your best bet is to take one master and sort it the way you want it and align them.

 

After you are done sorting and setting the configurations you want for a base template exit the program and copy the file C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Application Data\iTALC\personalconfig.xml on a share or something. Now everytime you install a master you will want to copy that file into the machine. You can also copy it into defaultuser incase you have multiple teachers logging into the same machine.

 

Also for the slowness have you tried patching the teacher stations with the TCP fix from http://www.lvllord.de/? The only other thing I can think of that would cause slowness is the specs of the teacher machine, you have to have a pretty decent machine with atleast 512mb of ram and pentium 2.8GHz or more depending on the number of workstations in a lab, the bigger the better pretty much.

[dbowen]

In some cases, the teacher machines are 500mhz Pentium III's circa 1999 with 384 megs RAM.

I'll try applying the patch from the link you listed and see if that helps.

Thank you for responding at all.

[SurfingBob]

In some cases, the teacher machines are 500mhz Pentium III's circa 1999 with 384 megs RAM.

I'll try applying the patch from the link you listed and see if that helps.

Thank you for responding at all.

 

Sadly those machine will simply not be powerful enough to manage labs of over 15 machines. Applying the patch only fixes connection lag.

[Enzomatrx]

FYI: It sorts in the "auto-sort" by the IP address/hostname you enter.

 

Kinda annoying when we have a freak computer named LAB2 in a series of LAB001, LAB003, etc.

 

LAB2 always ends up as the last one.

 

I guess the source could be modified to sort by name.

I guess it's off to my VM

[dbowen]

Our machines are set so the hostname is the Dell Service Tag. It would be nice if ITalc could fix it so that we could sort by the name we give to the computer... like 01-Libray, 02-Library,..

 

Do the guys who work on Italc ever venture on to these boards I wonder.?

[Enzomatrx]

i just compiled a version but can't test it until I'm at work tomorrow. I changed a line in classroom_manager.cpp that handles the sort, I believe.

 

bool clientIPSort( const client * _1, const client * _2 )
{
//return( _1->remoteIP() < _2->remoteIP() );
return( _1->name() < _2->name() );
}

 

I'm going to install it first thing on my laptop tomorrow and see if it works.

 

I've been customizing little things in the source, like changing the "locked" background to our school logo, which just makes it look a bit more professional.

[dbowen]

Thank you? May I have a copy of that after you've tested it?

ohhh.. how do I find this forum without getting an email notification?

[Enzomatrx]

I don't know if I can distribute because of the whole GNU thin. I guess technically I have to submit modifications to the source to the SVN, even if they're just changes for my own use.

But I'll look more into it and test tomorrow. I'd have to recompile it without my school's custom graphic.

[dbowen]

Thanks, I'll just wait for the developers to figure out that it needs to be done... seems like such a small thing.

[Enzomatrx]

But it does work, that little change in the source. It now sorts it by name, not IP. Just tested it.

So you could post on the sourceforge page about implementing that officially..

or do the fun thing and get a VM set up with Ubuntu and get play with compiling the SVN.

I'll remove the school logo as the lock when I am back home from work today and see what my options are for just getting it to you.

[dbowen]

What is SVN? Why would I want to compile anything for Ubuntu when we run XP? Wouldn't you just set up Ubuntu on a normal machine and not a VM (Virtual Machine)?

[damienharrison]

Hi hope you are all well,

 

Im having a very weird problem with iTalc

 

have added a classroom full of computers and added the hostnames into the screen i,e 4044-DL1-PC1 etc etc

 

But on the iTalc view certain PC's are shown twice but with different names ie 4044-DL1-PC18, 4044-DL1-PC29 both show PC18 and this happens for a few others and seems to be random.

 

Have deleted the XML files restarted iTalc and then re-added them and they are still duplicating.

 

Any ideas??

 

One of my ICT Techs renamed all the Classrooms PC's during half term so that 1 was next to 2 etc etc could this have caused the problem.

 

Cheers

[Geoff]

You're reverse DNS needs scavenging.

[damienharrison]

Cheers Geoff will do that tommorow

[Enzomatrx]

What is SVN? Why would I want to compile anything for Ubuntu when we run XP? Wouldn't you just set up Ubuntu on a normal machine and not a VM (Virtual Machine)?

 

Oh SVN is the code repository for the source code.

I set up a VM on my laptop just so I can compile the code, then drag the created Win32 package to my Windows XP (yay folder sharing VMWare).

 

And DNS scavenging definitely plays into the above problem a few posts up. During the summer when iTALC was being implemented and few computers were regularly in use, we had so many DHCP overlaps on our server it was a bitch to maintain.

Now, with every comp in use daily iTALC is up-to-date on all of them and we don't have overlaps.