Introduction & some problems

Wed Nov 30 14:48:09 UTC 2005

Hi All

I am converting the lab of my children's primary school with 35 motley
old
donated machines from Windows to Edubuntu. They are mostly PII 266 MHz
and Celeron 333 MHz with 64MB RAM. We will buy a new machine for a
single 
server, and get switches with two Gigabit ports for the server and 100
Mbps for
the thin terminals.

I teach electronic engineering (digital signal processing) at UJ, and
although
computers are not my speciality, I am comfortable building up and
installing PCs.
I have supported networks of ten or so machines in a Windows
environment.

However, I am a complete Linux newbie.

I have followed Linux since 1994, and always thought it a Good Idea to
try it out.
The compelling reason to actually do so now, was that the school
contacted me
last month to join others and sponsor the replacement of one machine in
the lab.
The current PCs will not run Windows XP or Office XP, and they feel left
behind.

Having gone through the upgrade cycle more than once, knowing the
schlepp of
supporting many machines (software especially), and considering any
current
entry level PC to be way overspec for use as a learner workstation, I
started
searching the web. When I found Edubuntu, it clicked immediately.

Reading on the website <http://wiki.edubuntu.org/EdubuntuWiki> : "As an
educator you'll be able to set up a computer lab, 
or establish an online learning environment, in an hour or less -- then
administer 
that environment without having to become a fully-fledged Linux geek," I
thought
this was going to be a piece of cake. It wasn't.

I spent many hours reading web documents, including the Ubuntu
<http://www.ubuntulinux.org/>  and Edubuntu <http://www.edubuntu.org/> 
websites, the TuxLab
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EdubuntuDocumentation?action=AttachFile&do=get&
target=tuxlabcookbook.pdf> Cookbook
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EdubuntuDocumentation?action=AttachFile&do=get&
target=tuxlabcookbook.pdf> , SkoleLinux documentation
<http://www.skolelinux.org/portal/documentation/> , edubuntu-devel
<http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/edubuntu-devel/> 
mailing <http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/edubuntu-devel/> list archives
<http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/edubuntu-devel/> , LTSP.org
<http://ltsp.org/> , and Wikipedia
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page> explanations of terms new to
me.
I have even lurked in the IRC room
<http://wiki.edubuntu.org/EdubuntuCommunity> , which I have to do from
home, because
my employer blocks IRC access on the campus.

Downloading <http://wiki.edubuntu.org/DownloadEdubuntu> and installing
Edubuntu LTSP server on a test machine proved
to be the easy part. Getting all the thin clients to work is still a
headache.

Thank you for everyone involved with Edubuntu. I believe it is an
excellent
project, and considering its age, remarkably mature. However, it might
be
better to manage down some expectations. Many of my problems probably
originate upstream from the Edubuntu itself, but that doesn't help me.

So here are some of my current issues, first hardware related:

Terminal booting:
    My Dell laptop with PXE
<http://www.ltsp.org/documentation/pxe.howto.html>  network card boots
flawlessly after invoking
    the Boot Menu with F12 and choosing onboard NIC as boot device.

    The old (c.1998) motherboards' BIOS would not recognize a PXE NIC
    even if installed. So I found Paolo Salvan's
<http://thinstation.sourceforge.net/docs/HowTo-NetBoot.txt>
Multi-driver remote boot
    program and now boot from floppy (hopefully an interim measure).
    This program finds and works with a variety of network cards.

    *** A network card with Asix chip AX88140 only gets halfway through
    the boot process, then freezes after giving the following message:
    "[4294684.802000] eth0: Setting full-duplex based on MII#1 link
    partner capability of 45e1."
    I have 22 of these cards, so a solution would be appreciated.

Video card:
    *** A generic S3 Trio 64+ card seems not to be recognized.
    The text terminals are fine, but X goes into black and white mode.
    Can I specify the video card in a configuration file?

Mouse:
    The serial mouse, and on some motherboards the PS/2 mouse
    was not recognised. I found the solution in the mailing list archive
<http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/edubuntu-devel/> :
    Add a line with the word   psmouse   in the kernel modules file.
    I used the text editor nano in a terminal: 
    $ sudo nano /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/modules

Newer hardware seems to be well supported, but the whole point of 
recycling old PCs as thin terminals is missed if they will not work.

Hardware for the server is not entirely trivial either. As the school
was
looking to replace 35 machines, I can consider a high end server.
LTSP.org has a useful page on server sizing
<http://wiki.ltsp.org/twiki/bin/view/Ltsp/ServerSizing#32_bit_CPUS_vs_64
_bit> . The following spec 
should not exceed the price of 5-10 new entry level machines:
    Dual 64 bit Xeon/Athlon M/B, cheapest processors, 4 GB ECC RAM
    dual Gigabit LAN, RAID-5 SCSI disks, DVD writer for backup, UPS.
Supporting more than 10 or 20 terminals with a single machine seems
to put some strain on ordinary workstation hardware posing as a server.

A software question: How do you load hundreds of learner accounts
on Edubuntu? What about password generation? I could get a machine
readable file with their particulars from the current school
administration
system. What about user groups for every class in order to deal with
age differences? Is there a tool for this? I can't find any in Edubuntu.

Another software issue: For political reasons I may have to use
Wine <http://www.winehq.com/> to allow for the use of legacy Windows
software :-(
or have all the machines dual boot into Windows 98.
Has anyone used Wine with MS Word and Powerpoint? Version?
I know OpenOffice is AsEasyAs, but the decision is not mine.
Hopefully this will be transient.

Lastly, does Edubuntu have posters to liven up a computer lab? Ours
currently reminds me of a jail cell, with the iron bars, small windows
high up on the wall, and all that computer beige sitting on the
workbench.
How about bright stickers for the cases?

I am determined to have our lab up and running when the new school
year starts in January, even if I have to buy video and network cards
and program the bootROMs.

Thanks for any feedback & input.

Hendrik Boshoff
Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering
University of Johannesburg
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