woody

Welcome Dave, good to have an internation community on these forums. 3000 pupils eh? I bet that keeps you busy. How many are on your team?

Well, I don't know what to use. We have NEVER had a projector stolen, NEVER had a PC or TFT stolen. We have had Laptops stolen and also Cameras, but to be fair these where down to teacher error. Teachers leaving them out in unlocked rooms! I have a quote for a branding iron of £464 but I don't know how well this will work or how clean it will be. I have images of melting plastic all over the place. But these things must work if the manufacturer is making them for that purpose. Any comments from experience?

Is that salary pro-rata, or is that for the two days a week?

@Richard - my advice is a mixture of what has already been said: Cream then for all you can get, then when you've had enough, tell them to shove it!!!!!!!

Mmmmm, Spark loads up pretty quick for me.

Right, OK, with a bit of messing around and with some pointers from the Wildfire forums, I have got LDAP to work. The following wildfire.xml works. All you have to do is change it to match your domain and group names. As a pointer, our domain is called 'NCTC' and the group of users it filters to allow access is called 'Staff'. Hope this helps: 9090 9091 mwood en localhost 389 sAMAccountName displayName mail dc=NCTC NCTC\admin yourpassword (& (objectCategory=Person) (memberOf=CN=Staff,OU=Staff,DC=NCTC) (sAMAccountName={0}) ) ]]> cn member description (& (objectClass=group) (memberOf=CN=Staff,OU=Staff,DC=NCTC) (member={0}) )]]> false org.jivesoftware.wildfire.ldap.LdapUserProvider org.jivesoftware.wildfire.ldap.LdapAuthProvider org.jivesoftware.database.EmbeddedConnectionProvider true [edit for code tags- please use code tags thanks. tarquel.]

I've had a go at connecting Wildfire to Active Directory following their LDAP instructions: http://www.jivesoftware.org/builds/wildfire/docs/latest/documentation/ldap-guide.html So far, it's not worked, but I don't know if I've missed anything as I'm not exactly an expert with LDAP. For instance, I don't know if the LDAP.port should be something different to the default of 389??? As it stands, when I log in after restarting the server, it still gives me just the one default admin user in the Wildfire admin console. If anyone else with a bit more experience in LDAP fancies a go at this I would be greatfull. It looks like it wouln't take 5 minutes to set up if you know what you are doing.

If you've tried simsperm mentioned above and had no effect re-installing, then dare I say ring the SIMS helpdesk?

Gatt - quick fix is to log onto workstation as administrator, rename SIMS.net folder in Program files/sims and re-run 'simsinst' in the setups folder to re-install. That should fix it until the next update. I have had some new thinking on this: I have been running upgrades remotely from the server with Remote Desktop Connection. I wouldn't have thought that would be anything to do with the loginprocesses error, but just to be sure, next time I will run updates directly on the server. It's the only thing I can think of that could be different to how everybody else does it. Any thoughts welcome.

We don't need to 'promote' our users every year because we name the groups and OUs after their year of enrollment, ie the new year 7s group will be called 'Year06'. That way, you never need to move them out of that group. Same with the document shares. If you need to change their level of privileges you just need to chenge the Group Policy.

I'm glad I check if there was already a thread on security marking. Was about to start one myself. We have used Selecta Mark but the person before me bought loads of the compound, about 30 tubes or something like that. Well, after two years of being here, I had got through maybe 4 or 5 tubes. The rest seemed to have dried up, or the compound seems to have 'melted' through the tubes and evaporated. Or maybe that is because some compund has got onto the tubes from an open one in the bag, but whatever the case, most of the tubes are totally wasted. I'm interested in branding. Has anyone done it? I noticed John has. Is it neat or does it melt theplastic too much and ends up being messy? Where would I buy a branding iron?

Interesting...... it looks like it will continue to work, but it will become illegal at the end of september. I wonder how many will uninstall it and buy Leopard? I suppose if you already have your HD partitioned with Windows on, you won't need bootcamp unless you need to reconfigure.

What do you mean by 'it runs out'? It stops working? Or not supported?

I'm a non-grouper, but I totally don't care what order my taskbar apps come in. A quick glance soon deciphers which is which. Well, someone's got to stick up for StewartKnight!

I know computers are fast becoming more and more powerful. Who doesn't? But do you not think the spec of machine needed to run aero is a bit ridiculous? I mean, you can run OSX Tiger on a G3 with 256mb RAM and 3gb HD space. That's a computer that is 5 or so years old!!! Now, most people will have to buy a new computer if they want to run aero.

Right, didn't realise I could do that! Thanks

I think that schools have been lax when it comes to security because they have got away with it for so long internally. Now they have started to put things online, you can't get away with it anymore. Granted in this case it looks like a lot of the blame goes to writers of Frogteacher. But for instance, for how long has SIMS used the word 'password' as a system password. I'll tell you how long. Right up to NOW! I had a problem re-installing FMS the other day and I don't normally get involved in Finance. Usually the local SIMS team come in and do the updates. But I had to ring the help desk (which is now a central one) and because I didn't know an administrator password for FMS, they asked me to log in as the default. What was it? Well, I won't say what here as it's publically assessible, but if you know much about SIMS, you probably won't have a hard time guessing. Logging on in this way, I had access to ALL of FMS and now I wonder how many other schools have this log on account on their system. Probably most if like me the Network Manager hasn't been involved in FMS. Safe to say I have changed it now. But you might want to check yours if you're not shure! My point is though, schools have always been lax with system security and it is only with the advent of system administrators and IT technicians that this has begun to change.

But you can limit the type of information you do put on there. For instance, attaching attendance data and maybe assessment data to a name is not as bad as attaching personal data like addresses, telephone numbers, DOB, medical history, family history, family links etc. As far as sending usernames and passwords out is concerned, what about the good old fashioned way of posting them in sealed envelopes once an account has been requested? You do have the issue however, of how protective the parent is with those account details. You would think if they cared for there child's welfare they would keep them secret.

I really can't see why schools need to put very sensitive data on their websites such as medical history and the likes. Who needs to access that from home? Even names and addresses are risky. Shure, there is lots of sensitive info going around on the web. I use internet banking with the HSBC although I'm considering giving up the conveniences of THAT: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/10/flaw_hsbc/ But when dealing with sensitive information about children, you have to ask whether you really need to publish that on a website, no matter how tight security is. Just keep it on the MIS in school. Maybe allow access through VPN where you can keep tight controll of who has access and when.

Set up sysaid yesterday. Simple install. No messing around with sql - it's all done for you. We are going to go with this. It's just a shame you can only have two administrators on the free version. However, if it performs well, there might be an argument for purchasing full package. I like the way you can customize pretty much all of it without any advanced knowledge (suites me fine). I think the documentation could have been a little more indepth but most stuf is self explanitary. I can't seem to get the SMS messaging to work though, and I think our ISP has blocked the script on the Ilient website that is used to register for free help. I will have to ring and ask them to register me on the phone. Has anyone else got SMS to work?

Wow this is the school I went to when I was a lad! I can't beleive they've been so stupid? Does anyone know who their Network manager/It technician is? It would be interesting to hear their take on this.

I've never seen a laptop with a vga input rather than output. Maybe a usb capture card plugged into the laptop would work, but then you would need composite output on the pc graphics card. Seems like a long winded way of doing things to me. Unless anyone knows of a different way.

I was just wondering why you might want to do this? I know if I did, I'd get teachers logging their home computer faults on the system from home. NOT a good idea.

If you order from CPC, ask them for a full catalogue. We use them all the time, it's amazing what a wide variety of stuff they sell. This is turning into a recommended suppliers thread!

Mmmm, what a good topic. I spent a large amount of time last year configuring onezero on a linux box, but I could never get the email confirmation right. For instance, if I added a job for my own reference, it would email every user regardless of their involvement. And when a user posted a request, it took the helpdesk about 20 seconds to process while it sent the email. Probably I had it configured wrong, but I'm not enough of a linux guru to work it out. So I gave up But now I might try one of these that will work off a windows server and see where I get