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Hi David,<br>
<br>
I will be administering the server in my spare time on a voluntary
basis and therefore want to minimize the administrative tasks by
letting their non-linux staff create user accounts, reset passwords
and so on as and when and do not need to be calling me all the time.
I have used Webmin for a short while and i like the collection of
tools it has to offer. I will install it in the VM and play with it
a bit more i think.<br>
<br>
I have today found out more about the client machines and they are
better than what i expected. I am told they are Celeron dual core
2.4 GHz, 2 GB RAM & 40 GB HD. I will pick them up this coming
Friday and confirm. If they are as described, then I guess this
falls into the "beefy" category below. The organization is moving
soon to another building and that is where the installation will
take place so i still have some time to test things.<br>
<br>
Thanks for sharing the link. It looks a pretty straightforward
method and i will give it a go when i get the client machines. One
thing is not very clear to me though with the fat client method.
Does the client still boot off the network with PXE and get the
"full image" loaded from the server or is the OS installed on the
local hard drive first???<br>
<br>
<br>
Thanks David for all your help,<br>
Faisal<br>
<br>
On 12/06/12 16:39, David Groos wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:3B674440-1C30-423D-816C-38DF619D09B9@gmail.com"
type="cite">Hi Faisal,
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Webmin is good, but even before jumping there I agree with
Matt and recommend giving the standard users and groups app a
tryo But then again, are you going to be administering the
server? Webmin is perhaps too much for just managing the users,
but it allows you to manage all sorts of other functions as
well, so if you are administering the server remotely then
webmin might provide a great suite of tools for that.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>If your clients are beefy enough then I would go with fat
clients. If they are so-so I would go with localapps and if
they are marginal I would go with thin clients.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>beefy > P4 2.4 GHz with 1 gig RAM</div>
<div>so-so > P4 1.6 GHz with 512 MB RAM</div>
<div>marginal > P3 or even P2 I have heard.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>[All Edubuntu users: would you give the same cut-off points?
What should we publish as our recommendations?]</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Alkis asserts that with a fatclient setup you can use a plain
(modern) desktop as the server and can be used as the 'teacher
computer' as well! That's what I'll be trying for next year.
Another thing you might want to look into is an easy system of
implementation described here: <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuLTSP/ltsp-pnp">https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuLTSP/ltsp-pnp</a>.
It's very straightforward with basically the idea that the way
your server is setup so will be setup your thin/local/fat
clients and therefore you pretty much only need to manage 1
system and not deal with a chrooted system. Pretty cool.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I just went looking for up to date info on LTSP and it is
hard to always know for sure… One thing that is helpful are the
old edubuntu mailing list archives as there is lots of practical
experience shared there and it is all time-stamped. Good luck
and let us know how things are going!</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>David G</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
<div>
<div>On Jun 11, 2012, at 10:52 PM, Faisal wrote:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<blockquote type="cite">
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<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> Hi David,<br>
<br>
Thank you for your response and thank you for pointing out
Webmin. No I don't have any LDAP setup currently. Perhaps
i can achieve what i want (an easy web interface for user
account administration for the non-technical staff) using
Webmin??? If so, then there is no need for any LDAP. It
is not possible to estimate the number of users right now,
but i suspect the lab will be there to use for a good
number of this organizations users, they run afternoon
classes for children and i am guessing there may be tens
of potential users each requiring a user account.<br>
<br>
I have been promised used desktop computers being donated
by a school and i don't have their full specs right now.
But i am told they would at least be P4 or better. Sorry
about the mixup of the terminology, by fat client i was
referring to regular desktop computers with a local hard
drive. But whether they would host the entire OS image
locally or partially i am not sure about. Which is best
and gives best performance?<br>
<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
Faisal<br>
<br>
On 12/06/12 04:29, David Groos wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAAMth24uZ8wzN9QUp5jKEyFkpEDyOUG-URZFMDxOh7kiqptcrg@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">Hi Faisal,<br>
<br>
I'm not sure I understand completely -- do you already
have an LDAP server running and you want to tie into
that, or are you wanting to create an LDAP server on the
edubuntu server to manage your users? I've done the
former, but if you don't already have a centrally
managed LDAP system I would simply use the normal user
management system. For the first 3.5 years I used this
built in system. I also used webmin to manage users and
in general was happy with it.<br>
<br>
(also, you mentioned you were going to get used, 'fat
clients' that you were going to run as local apps--I
believe the correct term is you were going to get used
'thick clients' since with LTSP we have the term 'fat
clients' used to described a situation where the client
runs everything locally, getting the entire image from
the server. Please describe the specs of the used
hardware you are getting.) If you run 15 clients as
local apps you will be quite fine with the server
hardware you described, I'd say. If you are able to use
fat clients (by having powerful enough HW specs on the
clients) seems like the server setup would be overkill.<br>
<br>
David G<br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 10:09
PM, Faisal <span dir="ltr"><<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:xashiish@gmail.com" target="_blank">xashiish@gmail.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> Hi Andrie,<br>
<br>
Sorry, i should have provided more details
regarding the user. The number of workstations is
small but the lab will be open to a large number
of people, potentially tens of users and the staff
have never used linux before.
<div>
<div class="h5"><br>
<br>
On 12/06/12 04:04, Adrie Taniwidjaja wrote:
<blockquote type="cite"> <br>
I think for this small size of instalation
using Edubuntu default user manager is more
than enough.<br>
Why make the instalation become more
complicating with LDAP stuff ?<br>
<br>
On Tue, 2012-06-12 at 03:51 +0100, Faisal
wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="CITE"> Hi all,<br>
<br>
I am thinking of setting up a small LTSP
network consisting of 10-15 workstations
for a local charity. I am coming from the
windows terminal services / Citrix world
and i am very familiar with that side of
things and my Linux experience is average
at best.<br>
<br>
So far I have installed these flavours of
an LTSP implementation: The debianedu
based Skolelinux - <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.slx.no/"
target="_blank">www.slx.no</a> and
Edubuntu 12.04 in a VMWare virtual server
and i have been mighty impressed with the
ease of install of Edubuntu in particular
and i think i will go with it. I have been
able to boot up a couple of thin clients
simultaneously for testing purposes and
all seemed to run fine in my small lan at
home. I loved some of the built in tools
such as Epostes for ease of management.<br>
<br>
In terms of hardware, i think we are going
for donated/cheap used fat clients and
have the local apps option for
LibreOffice, Firefox etc to ease the load
on the server. I am also thinking of
having an NFS share for the /home
partition on a separate grey box(if that
further helps ease the load of the server
and makes it run better).<br>
<br>
As for the server, there are good deals
going on where i am for small office
servers such as the HP Proliant ML110 G7
with Intel Xeon E3-1220 / 3.1 GHz(quad
core) and 8 GB of DDR3 1333 mhz
RAM(upgradable to 16) and 7200 rpm HD disc
with dual Gigabit NICs. Would something
like this be suitable for powering the
10-15 workstations or will that be pushing
it?<br>
<br>
The charity do not have tech savvy staff
and i would like a centralized user
account setup with openldap. But ideally,
have a web gui front end for user account
creations and password resets. I am
looking into tools such as Gosa2 - <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/"
target="_blank">https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/</a>
and Easy LDAP management found here: <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.ldap-account-manager.org/"
target="_blank">http://www.ldap-account-manager.org/</a>
. I have not been successful so far in
setting up these tools, but i am still
working on it. I may ask someone in my
local LUG for help with this part if i
struggle. Does anyone know similar tools?<br>
<br>
Apologies for asking too many questions as
i am still researching and don't have a
clear plan yet. Would appreciate you
advice and guidance to any tool or
resource that would help me get answers.<br>
<br>
Regards<br>
Faisal<br>
<br>
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<br>
<br>
Adrie Taniwidjaja - PT. BeLogix
Indonesia<br>
Jl. Lengkong Kecil No.73 Bandung<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:adrie@belogix.com"
target="_blank">adrie@belogix.com</a>,
022 9199 8360 </td>
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