Marci

Cost of iPad (1 or 2, new or used) + free PAYG sim from T-Mobile + £20 credit top up. Put sim in mobile phone, text 6MONTHWEB to 441... put sim in iPad (after chopping down to size)... et voila. 1Gb 3G access per month for 6 months. After 6 months take out of ipad, put in phone again (assuming one had intelligence to keep what one chopped off to make it back up to a standard sim), topup £20, repeat. I do the same with my iPhone3G, but then also stick £5 per month on for which I get unltd texts. I never make voice calls. That means £140 per year covers unltd texts and net access on both devices for 12 months. So, taking the quote above for an iPad 3G 16Gb from apple at £429, add £40 just for iPad net access for the year, gives you £469 total. I hate contracts... especially when PAYG is cheaper.

Yep - CC3 has no impact on SMBClient working or not... (we're on CC3 here). If LDAP works, then that's it as far as communicating with AD is concerned. Any other reasons for it not working are either bad config.php, or missing Samba / smbclient on the webserver. For FreeBSD webservers, it's just a case of: server# cd /usr/ports/net/samba-smbclient && make install clean For Fedora, I think it's a case of: server# yum update server# yum -y install samba server# yum -y install smbclient And on uBuntu... server# yum -y install samba For some reason smbclient appears to have gone missing from the Fedora Samba package so has to be added separately, whereas with uBuntu it just comes in with Samba. With FreeBSD, you can just install SMBClient on it's own from the portstree. Once installed, test it as follows: server# smbclient //server/share -U DOMAIN/username [Note: use opposite slashes to what you'd expect on a Windows box] It should prompt for password... then drop you at the smb command prompt... issue the 'ls' command and you should see the contents of that Windows share. smb: \> ls If you do, then your server is good to go and the block should work fine. Issue a 'q' at smb prompt to quit smbclient, then close your terminal session. Your next step would normally be to configure LDAP authentication in Moodle if you haven't already, then install the LDAP Capture auth plugin. Once that's on, go to Moodle > Users > Authentication > Manage Authentication, and turn OFF LDAP Server, and enable LDAP Capture as your main auth plugin. Now install the Moodle SMB Client block. Edit the file 'config_smb_web_client.php'... which contains guidance on the various config settings (as does README.txt), and reupload, then enrol yourself onto a course with a matching id to one of the shares you popped into the config file, and you should see the relevant share appear in the block.

Once LDAPCapture is installed and set as your default auth plugin, it's just a case of setting shares in the SMB-Client's config file, which are mapped to course IDs. Instructions to do this are in the file "README.TXT" within the zip archive downloadable from Moodle.org BUT, before you start, you need to test smbclient is working from commandline on your server... so, before installing the Moodle SMBClient block (which is all the Moodle block is), you need to have smbclient itself installed and fully functional on your webserver - it's part of the Samba suite which should be available from the repository for whatever Linux distro you're running.

Well, I'm following the migration guide to migrate from Enterprise Console 3 to EC4.5 using a new server with a new identity... gets as far as sect. 6.1.4 step 10, and the Sophos Management Service fails to restart on the new server

Which bit - the SMB Client block or the LDAP Capture plugin, or both?

Our LEA will only cover the admin network, they won't touch the curriculum side of things unless we hand over vast amounts of money (which exceed the cost of us employing another fulltime technician). If only everywhere were equal...!

I think the main benefit of RM is, if it all goes wrong there is a number you can call who is contracted to assist til it's sorted... whereas with vanilla it's down to your knowledge and whatever you can find using your own resources (especially if your employer won't get you the necessary qualifications to do the job). We were planning to shift from CC3 to Vanilla this summer, but since that decision was made we've lost 1x fulltime tech and our Network Manager, leaving myself and a part-time tech. I therefore suggested the decision to abandon the vanilla plan in favour of shifting to CC4, purely on the basis that there aren't enough of us in the department to support a vanilla network - if we hit an issue, there aren't enough of us to allow (for instance) myself to dedicate a day or more trying to find the solution... the day-to-day demands on the department keep us working flatout as it is... If we still had the other fulltime tech and the Network Manager, then yes, there were enough of us then to allow any one of us to be out of action for several days working on a single issue. So, a balance of manpower vs knowledge vs budget was the decider for us... it's rarely as clearcut as RM vs Vanilla - you have to consider all the factors.

Print Management --> Papercut RM SmartCache --> Smoothwall / Censornet RMVP4 --> Sophos Software Deployment --> Standard Microsoft way of deploying software RM Tutor --> iTalc / NetSupport (NetSupport IS RMTutor) That's about it really. Everything else is just a wrapper to simplify doing account management directly within AD.

Apple Support in the UK is useless at best imo. There are unqualified (read: uncertified) geeks on here that do a better job of it than they do.

Generally, if you register each dongle on their site before deployment, then they will offer to replace it. If you didn't, they will make you buy a new one.

I cheat and use a wireless audio transmitter (Sennheiser) from laptop to mixing desk. Resolves all such issues instantly.

...which is where RSYNC comes into it's own. Here, each machine runs a local rsync daemon. The server runs it's daemon in pull mode every 15 minutes for each local client (with a time offset per client) and pulls the entire /users/ folder for each local machine, and syncs it all back to the /users/ tree on the server based on checksum diffs. The server is then backed up via normal methods. Should our users need to access files in another curriculum area (or vice versa), they can drag and drop to their windows home folder which we mount on the desktop and on their dock, but from the windows side they can access their individual user folders on the X-Serve as a network share mapped to a local drive letter. Eliminates all software issues as everything is working with local home folders, those home folders are backed up frequently, and accessible from any platform on the network. X-Server is an OD Master, bound to AD. We have AD Groups mapped to OD Groups & apply managed preferences to users at the OD Group level from the X-Server via WGM. We apply machine restrictions in OD via WGM. Clients are bound to both OD & AD. Users authenticate against AD on login, then retrieve all managed preferences via OD, and local folders are created on demand during first logon to a client. The only real thing a student has to do is to consistently use the same Mac in the same lesson, but that's purely because I couldn't be bothered to write a script at logon to trigger an rsync to move user data from the server back to the client on-demand. (I think that made sense...!?)

Thursday (pending approval from the powers above)

S'exactly how I do it at our place...

Conversations with EdIT have semi-confirmed it's a load issue... ...they've suggested some methods we can use to reduce the necessity to use libproxy for the time being.

Hi steve...! Secondaryproxy = proxy... if testing libproxy it's on port 6665, but think EdIT have to grant access to it for you. We only run staff thru it for YouTube and teacherstv etc. EdIT say there's only 1 other school reporting similar issues. S'got me stumped! Cheers for having a look... Can email you a wireshark trace so you can see what's going on if you like...?

All depends what functionality you intend to offer thru the site. The quality of the website is only as good as the combination of skills of the designer, and the person generating the content to put on the site. The speed of the site is only as good as the connection you run it off and the quality of the hardware. The security of the website is only as good as the person writing the code. cPanel provide a lifetime license (£15) for educational establishments to allow you to run your own webserver inhouse should you desire, which allows you to tie your site into internal authentication systems (eg: ActiveDirectory) easily. If running a VLE, then an inhouse webserver can also be easily tied into school MIS system to offer parents access to data etc. Again, all depends on the skills of the person doing the job as to what they can ultimately achieve. eg: Thru our self-hosted self-designed site, staff can reset student passwords & profiles without needing to bother IT Support Dept. Parents can access all data for their child thru our VLE as it's integrated with our Facility install. Premises staff can control the environmental / Building Management / CCTV systems from home. All registration is done online... all behaviour/rewards are logged online. Our site is also compatible with mobile devices, so PE staff can use it to take registers electronically whilst out on the playing field using their mobile phone. I can add staff to various permissions groups in ActiveDirectory from my iPhone whilst I'm sat on the loo should I so desire. It all really depends what you actually want from the site...

Depends - s'an option when you take on CC3, but you're not forced to have it. We run CC3 here but it was installed before my time, with no filtering. We had to add our own Smoothwall boxes. Basically, CC3 isn't a fixed spec. It's down to your budget and what bits of it you choose to have.

Morning chaps - just to report, we've been having major issues with libproxy for a month now. Type in website address, hit GO, and we end up sat looking at "waiting for [website]" in the status bar for anything up to 40 seconds before the site loads, IF it loads. A lot of the time it just heads for a timeout. Other times it's perfect. However, at no point can it be referred to as "reliable" for delivering a lesson. Yes, it's been reported to our LEA, who have requested wireshark traces etc etc, which we've provided. Then they've requested more wireshark traces. I've spent days checking ISA server configs, pinging here there and everywhere, attempting traceroutes, trying to diagnose the issue. If I simply flip all our staff onto secondaryproxy rather than libproxy, all works immediately, therefore, I conclude the problem is NOT here, and it's something outside of our building. We've now wasted a month of 100Mb internet access trying to resolve an issue that is not (as far as we can tell) within the scope of our property, and can't seem to make any headway in getting it resolved. Any feedback or advice from yourselves at this point would be greatly appreciated, before I resort to shoving the entire school out of our 4Mb ADSL line. Thanks.

Security is defined by permissions set on the shares on your windows servers. If a student doesn't have access to a share over the regular network, then they don't have access to a share over the SMB client. If you have ClamAV installed on your moodle host server, then it'll run uploads thru that also. Line 2383 of class_smbwebclient.php is where the upload function begins. function UploadFile ($file) { $this->_SmbClient('put "'.$file.'" "'.$this->name.'"', $this->parent); } You could expand on this easily enough via various relatively basic (depends on your php knowledge ultimately) methods to restrict filetype... function UploadFile ($file) { $allowable_ext = array('avi','mpg','mov','3gp','3GP','wmv'); $pieces = explode('.', $file); $ext = $pieces[count($pieces) - 1]; if (in_array($ext, $allowable_ext)) { $this->_SmbClient('put "'.$file.'" "'.$this->name.'"', $this->parent); } } Or (better and more secure, as it won't be long til they work out to just rename the file) you could go by mimetype...

OK - am beginning to suspect the issue lies in your OU Containers for staff and students within the various config files. How to resolve this am not sure, unless you can get me a screencap of your AD Tree expanded down to the various user folders just so I can confirm they're definitely set correctly. Those being incorrect are about the only thing we can come up with for a cause...

Staff here are set as priviledged users on their regular machine, but on any other machine they're locked down. Priviledged users are set to allow changes to themes - visuals, sounds, fonts, resolution etc etc but can't install software.

Alternatively, if you have webstats software running (Google stats, AnalogX, AwStats or similar) on your webserver then you can just use that and filter for your Moodle base url, or grab your webserver's log files and again, filter it for the Moodle base url.

A clear "No" I'm afraid. A useable alternative source of material however = Legal Music For Videos - Creative Commons

Would it upset folks dramatically if I told them that I've also done this for all our Windows machines too? All machines pick up a hosts file at startup that's dished out by our webserver. I can turn our DNS server off if I want and you don't really notice it, other than clients not being able to find other clients (and the 10 less critical servers that aren't in the hosts file), but they can always reach the main servers. If there's a change, I just update the hosts file on the webserver and it's picked up on next reboot. Strictly speaking, this is generally frowned upon as an amateur fudge for not being arsed to sort DNS properly, however, if one knows ones DNS is 100% peachy, then it simply adds another level of redundancy to the system. I've been doing it on the Macs since we got them, on OSX 10.5... but it would also partially explain why our 10.6 machines never seemed to suffer the AD binding issues that many other early adopters saw...