openhgs

New Use for Old Hardware: Network RAID Backup

A wise man indeed! The most useful home computer I had was the one that stopped the junk stashed under the stairs from spilling out. It did it's job perfectly for several years and never gave me any problems. Eventually it was tossed, along with said junk. Centralised computing accessed by something like a thin client is a fine idea. The big obstacle is overcoming the PC mind set instilled by M$. Man/machine symbiosis. Some will be enamoured by the technology and embrace it, accepting substandard quality and performance in the name of "convenience", just like they do with their mobile phones. The camera quality of a mobile is appalling. A Minox is just as portable and has far superior picture quality and this is the reason one is part of 007s tool kit. We investigated man/machine symbiosis when I was at uni in the 1970s. The obvious use is something like switching on the TV and tuning to your favourite channel as you enter your lounge, or the ATM machine knowing who you are without inserting your card. I'm quite happy to switch on the TV manually and push the buttons on the ATM machine. It is conceivble to download your memories to computer, allowing them to be preserved forever or so that someone else could live your experiences. Great! An endless supply of Z list celebrities, ready for the gullible.

Cases could be made of metal like they were in the big iron days. We had proper computers then, not the toys we have today, computers made of steel plate not cheap and nasty plastic. Steel is recycleable and can have many different finishes applied. You could have a gleaming chrome plated case. Wood or stone are other possibilites, albeit expensive; both of which are available now. This page http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/62/1/ has some lovely wooden examples. (Hate the blue lights!) We might also see the organic or the quantum state computer, but I doubt either will be in 30 years. Thirty years ago, when I started my computing career, it was said that binary would be out in 10 years time and computers would be tristate (base 3). I haven't seen any manufacturer offering a commercial tristate machine. We might also see more use of analog computing. I think that there are several financial problems which might be solvable using analog methods.

Just what we need, yet another free ghosting tool. We've used http://udpcast.linux.lu/ for ages with excellent results, or simply boot from a linux disk and use dd.

We use kde and kiosktool does exactly this. We use NIS as our authentication (must easier to setup and maintain than LDAP IMHO) and no matter which machine the user logs on to, they gain access to their files, desktop, etc. We're a Fedora site. OT I upgraded one of our machines yesterday and it is now running Fedora 8, which hasn't been officially announced yet. Looks like we're first cab off the rank with it.

Most users have wisely abandoned IE in favour of Firefox. Those that are sticking to IE tell me that are using v6 as their applications won't run under v7.

Our website is http://www.openhgs.org.uk - any other url is nothing to do with me.

Form memory the Central Manchester City Learning Centre are a SuSE site and have associations with several high and primary schools in the city. You could treat yourselves to a jolly and come down the M6 and visit us in Brum.

In the Linux world I use Opera v7.54 - I did try Opera v8 but went back to v7 as there is an image resizing bug in v7 that I like. When you opeate at say 120% magnification, which we oldies like to do, the text is increased but the images are the original size. For flash pages, I use Firefox simply because flash is handled better in Firefox. For speed I use either Dillo or Lynx. I also reguarly use Konqueror and Seamonkey. I too have been using Opera since the advert days; of course under Linux it was easy to configure your system so these ads wouldn't display. In the M$ world, I exclusively use Firefox and before that Netscape. I haven't used IE since v5.

We had some permanent stickers made, except like all permanent stickers, they can be removed with the right tools, so in addition to these, I write the schools initials and postcode using as 5mm permanent felt tip. The ink can be removed, but the solvent etches into the case nicely, leaving the machine clearly marked. The cheapest and most effective method of marking is to buy some oil based paint in the school colours and paint stripes on the item. It won't look pretty, but no one is going to steal the computer and if they do, they won't find anyone who would buy it. I've suggested this a number of times, but aesthetics always wins over security.

Maidenhead as the recommended server, 8066D/L 8437U/L It reckons Brum is 50 miles from Maidenhead...

Thanks for the replies nice people! To answer a few questions raised. A professional cabling company performed the installation and ICT had no say in the matter. We in ICT installed the machines as best we could. We chose the smallest footprint boxes we had in stock and went with flat screens to keep it compact. I assumed the cabling people, would be fitting it to the wall behind or underneath the benching. The keyboards are on top of the base units simply because there is no where else to put them. I am reluctant to put the base units on their sides as they are prone to fall over. The monitors are more stable than they appear. Apparently there are plans to put the base units underneath, which will help recover some space. Yes, we've said the trunking should be removed and not mounted on the surface. Our pleas have fallen on deaf ears. Trunking on the bench is a waste of space. I also have visions of bottles of drink being knocked over and spilling into the power sockets with dire consequences. Try as we might, we cannot keep drinks completely out of the classrooms. I am not happy about the data and electrical cabling running in the same trunking. I pointed this out to the big wigs, who checked back with the installers, and were told it is OK to do this. It was then pointed out to me that we have similar cabling on other areas of the school, which I didn't know about. That might explain some of the intermittent problems that we experience. They are exactly as unixman described; shared drives vanishing, connections to CMIS terminating for no reason, eportal dropping off the face of the planet etc. I know it's a very bad idea to run data and power cabling together, but them in charge seem unwilling to accept my advice. We in ICT are between a rock and a hard place; we are probably going to have to make the best of this mess, and when network traffic grinds to a halt as a consequence of collisions, we can say "well we warned you". This room is connected to the rest of the network by a fibre link. I don't if the EMI will just affect this room or have wider consequences.

Here is a picture of our latest installation http://www.openhgs.org.uk/albums/techsupp/pic_0185.thumb.jpg. Here is a link to a larger image http://www.openhgs.org.uk/albums/techsupp/pic_0185.jpg I'd like some comments on problems, which I can present to all here who reckon that the installtion is fine. BTW, the single part trunking carries both power and cat5e cabling, the latter of which is unshielded.

0845 800 1020 according to their web site http://www.play.com/HOME/HOME/6-/AboutUs.html?page=helpdesk

Have a pie floater and a ride on the bay tram for me

I cannot access the site using Opera, I get a message "Unknown user-agent You are banned from this site due to a unknown user-agent." I cannot access it via konquerer either; I just get a blank page. Thankfully Dillo works fine.

We have some old digital cameras which use floppy. Also, why use a CD for a small file? Just today I sent out a floppy 100K pdf file on it. Last week I installed Windows 3.1 from floppies just for a laugh. Speed on my P4 box is what all M$ o/ses should be. Up and ready to go in 15 seconds.

http://www.yourglue.com

You are rysncing to a different machine aren't you? rsyncing within a file system is an interesting idea - it will very quickly fill.

Static i/p works very well for us. It means we are in total control; no one can just plug their own machine onto the network and gain access. They have to come to ICT first. Why should the default gateway or dns server change i/p address? I've assigned them ans these settings will stay. We don't use any directory service. I never have and I've administered some huge networks in my time. All you have to do is remember the i/p address of every device on your network, which is surprizingly easy if you chose sensible names.

If people are gaming, I like to VNC their session and "help" them. It's best when they are on the verge of achieving a high score and you move their ship into the path of an oncoming missile. Back in the dumb terminal days, you could join someone elses screen to yours and drop random characters into their work. They would be typing say "PRINT A3$" but it would appear as "PRIZNT A3$". I've had hardened professionals walk away from their VDU muttering "I can't type at all today". My own personal favourite was when my boss was working away on his PC and for reasons that I can't remember now he didn't have the lid on his box. I was talking to him about one of the clients and he suddently started swearing "bloody windows 95 has crashed again!", as I handed him the 486DX from inside his box. :-)

Which version of Bloxx are you running? I have 3.2.1.6 (snappy version number) and it definitely doesn't have per machine settings it's per user - or more specifically per OU as it picks up groups from an Active Directory bind. We have the same version as you. We have static i/ps on all of our machines, which enables us to track by machine. We don't use active directory either.

Bloxx can certainly do this. You can control what an individual user or a group of users can access. You can target groups of machines too, which is what we do. Staff machines have less strict filtering than student machines.

We use Bloxx to ensure that our internet access is double filtered for extra purity. The LEA allow youtube.com but we don't and Bloxx allows us to filter it off. The main advantage of using Bloxx rather than Dans Guardian is you plug it in and it works - there is no setup effort on your part. Also, the Bloxx people support the box for you; sometime ago ours suffered a hardware failure and they just shipped us a new box and fitted for it us. On the downside it is an extra cost to the school.

I think if you have a split server setup, you can run as many eportals are you have servers, so one CMIS server and two eportal servers = 2 eportals. You could, I think run eportal on the CMIS server too, giving you three. We have a single CMIS/eportal server and we run two eportals, one using IIS and the other Apache Tomcat. We only have one dataserver service running.