mats

Interesting. But pfsense is a firewall - have you got it doing web filtering or are you using another product for that?

Doesn't your ISP automatically block sites on the IWF list? Which filtering solution are you testing? Does it do reporting, SSL interception & allow different filter levels by AD group?

Slashdot says yes. https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/05/17/1941210/microsoft-releases-big-convenience-rollup-update-for-windows-7?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

BackWPUp. Free, scheduled, options on what to back up and where to put it, email notification, logs. Easy to set up too. - - - Updated - - - I also highly recommend wordfence for tightening up security and keeping an eye on an installation.

Thanks Dave but we're locked into a 3 year contract with RM. Will certainly consider schools broadband next time. Chris - thanks for the update. RM would do well to publicise this sort of info to save people starting to look elsewhere. Will the reporting cover the requirements of the DfE's "Keeping children safe in education" paper?

Thanks @AlanD, you've confirmed my suspicion re safetynet reporting. I'm guessing the Draytek add-on doesn't do reporting either? We're still on smartcache and looking to replace it (it's out of support too) but struggling to find something which differentiates children vs staff (using ad groups), has decent reporting and doesn't cost £££s. Right now, I'm starting to consider cracking the smartcache and building a log analysis / reporting tool for it. Internally I think it's very like the dansguardian option (squid, apache).

Speaking as one who's seen a school's domain moved from a DC with CC4 to another DC without CC4, I can tell you that you really don't want the old GPOs coming across. You end up with lots of unnecessary stuff - which you can't always edit or prune. Much better to throw out the GPOs and probably start again with a new domain.

Supplementary question - the Sept 2016(?) draft of "Keeping children safe in education / Statutory guidance for schools and colleges"* from the DfE includes the line "Governing bodies and proprietors should be confident that systems are in place that will identify children accessing or trying to access harmful and inappropriate content online.". This smells like automated reporting of attempts to get to the bad bits of teh intarnet. So - does your solution feature reporting or do you have to go through the logs to find the misbehaving children? Ta, Mat * https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/487799/Keeping_children_safe_in_education_draft_statutory_guidance.pdf

I've never used winscp from the command line so I'm flying blind a little here. Try scp from the linux command line to verify that you can copy the file sucessfully with your user & password. Is /var/lib/automysqlbackup a file or directory? Should be ok with a file, if it's a directory I'm not sure if it'll work like that - check for recursive options.

We've been teaching html via https://learn.playto.io/html-css/lesson/0n and by editing html files on a shared drive in notepad for local viewing. For the first, evidence was screenshots, which is a bit labourious but could work with any online thing. For the second, the html is still there.

Python has libs which will handle pop3 and mysql. Have a look at poplib for the former.

I've run fog sucessfully on an old p4 desktop - I suspect anything you give it on a modern virtual host will be fine. I know ubuntu 14.04 server is pretty happy as a VM; can't comment on other distros.

C'mon folks - time for a crowdsourced & free keyword list!

Quite right too. The chancellor's effectively subsidising motoring at the moment by taking less tax than he was. That shortfall has to be made up elsewhere - where it's probably harder to avoid.

Depending how old your acer is, you might find that recent releases of ubuntu are too graphics-heavy for it. I've had success with 5+ year old laptops with xubuntu and lubuntu which are lighter versions of ubuntu.

I'm sure the Dutch are just as keen on self-preservation as we are. I suspect that when you can get around with minimal interactions with motor vehicles, cycling is (and feels) much safer. Their accident rate per mile travelled bears this out - much safer than here.

Lots of local authorities offer cycle training. Not usually expensive either.

It's not odd really. High quality cycle infrastructure is, and feels, safe. Helmets (like lycra, fast bikes, lawlessness and aggression) are usually a symptom of a nasty cycling environment.

Isn't it time somebody started about cycling on pavements? I see we've covered running red lights.

Indeed. Just like badly behaved motorists aren't motorists. And naughty truckers aren't truckers, they're, er, people driving trucks? More seriously, the problem with "cyclist" is that it covers everybody from Chris Froome to the mother going to the shops with a child on the back. What works for one doesn't necessarily work for the other. As for compulsory training, don't pretty much all year 6 kids get Bikeability training (which replaced cycling proficiency about 20 years ago)?

"Someone did something bad". People misbehave. Live with it.

For classrooms, Epson. Quick corners. No more to say.

Amazing kit for the price, but it's a linux computer without a network connection so I'm struggling a bit to see applications (apart from ones using the hdmi) where you'd use it instead of an arduino. Ethernet or wifi (and not a £10 add-on) would have made it much more useful.

We've got some 3 year old laptops which are on charge all the time when in the trolley. Some now have battery life of under half an hour - I recommend trolleys which don't charge continuously. And yes, they are a PITA.

Looking at /usr/bin and /bin, pretty much everything is executable. You might get somewhere with using that boot disc and then executing "chmod u+x /usr/bin" and the same for /bin .