Desktop Install - Central Login ??

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Thu, 31 Jul 2008, Mon Sagullo wrote:

> I just recently plunged into 40 very fat clients for our new lab in
> school:-) 
> 
> Kindly correct me if I am wrong, but can I make a list of users -
> students with their respective log-in names and password - on one
> desktop, then copy this configuration file (I don't exactly know how to
> refer to this), and then copy this on all the desktops so all the
> students can use any of the computers with the same username and password
> - without me doing this manually on all the units?

You can do it, but you should _strongly_ consider learning NIS instead.
It's relatively quick to set up and it means new accounts automatically
propogate across all machines the moment you create them on the server.

	https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SettingUpNISHowTo

> From my corner of the globe, I still could not find a real supplier for
> "thin and net appliance." And with what I have read from this listgroup
> about the issues on smoothing out the "friendship" between thin clients
> and an Ubuntu server, I chose what I believe is the more manageable
> approach, considering my situation as described in the above paragraph:

We've never used specific thin client hardware, we just use old computers.
That generally works great for us.  Experience will vary depending on your
position on the globe, but with a decent server, that scales very well for
us.

> Any script to minimize this tedious routine would be much appreciated. 

NIS (or better yet LDAP) is the real answer to this problem.  A little
reading and experimenting will make your life so much easier.

> I am glad to have stumbled on how to do a timed-shutdown :-)

sudo at 23:00<enter>
shutdown -h now<enter>
press <ctrl>-d

"at" is a very useful command.

> So far, the "repeatable" success rate is far from okay when I try setting
> the wireless NICs to roaming, then type in the password after the prompt;
> enabled MAC filtering thrown in. I noticed that the "repeat success"
> seems to slide down when I have more than one wireless AP/Router within
> range. ??

Your desktops are on wireless?  If they're fixed to their locations, don't
use roaming mode.  Instead, use "manual configuration", set the essid, etc.
That will work more reliably.  You can usually set the BIOS to turn the
machine on at a particular time (eg 9am) and you can add a line to
/etc/crontab like this:

00 23	* * *	root	shutdown -r now

which will shutdown every night at 23:00.

Gavin