The learning curve is furtuntely getting muc smaller.... If you are settuing up a new system, you''ll run into few problems I'f you are upgrading, the story might be different. I learned a lesson that I think many can learn from. I inherited an old ltsp setup (5-6 years), where the most knowledagble teacher had installed webmin.... it made sense at the time I guess, but he was unaware at how webmin, the user db /etc/group and /etc/passswd as well as the gui work very differently from each other. Coupled wit that, if your user is not connected with a unique primary group you are screwed. Then if your /home/$user is not ownerd user.user throughout hist home dir, you are screwed. Finallly if the user is accidentally deleted from webmin or /etc/group man...... yoou are REALLY screwed.<div> <br></div><div>This is what happens:</div><div><br></div><div>Adding a user from the gui.... if he didnt' already exist, perfec, if he did... u need to either get the correct uid and gid in place. and make sure his dir, if already exists is owned by home with his ownership.</div> <div><br></div><div>In a school with 200+ students + teachers... this can be a painful time consuming job (Took me aboiut 50 hours in total for about 200 users, but I also delted all the old users.</div><div><br></div><div> I then creatded to fat environments, one for yonger folk, another for senior folk, made a lot of terminals fat.... and lo and behold... which gods one should thannk I'm not sure,,,,</div><div><br></div><div>But that being a serious worst case scenario and being able to fix it all under a week + add 10 terminals.... they were baffled. I said... well i guess now u know why u asked for ltsp to begin with.... just make sure no one absolutely no one touches it other than user db gui and adding MAC addresses where necessary.... a gui for that would be really appreciated.. I'd make it myself... if someone helped me out when I got stuck</div> <div><br></div><div>kind regards,</div><div>David Van Assche</div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 5:13 AM, David Groos <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:djgroos@gmail.com">djgroos@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">Hi Dave,<br> <br> Sounds like you are new to Edubuntu? Welcome.<br> <br> I've been using Ubuntu running the LTSP system (thin clients) for 3+ years now in my classroom of 20 or so computers--actually support 3 classes. Since the start I've used LTSP, never used local installs--actually we use recycled machines and it's easiest just removing the HD. Our first year we used pure thin client setups where practically all processing was done on the server. That was cool except when it came to using a java-based application called CmapTools. Only 2 clients could use that software, barely, and with another user the whole server would become unresponsive. Flash content was pretty unacceptable as well.<br> <br> Thus we moved to using 'local apps' the next year. One can install a program into the chroot, then tell the client to use these installed programs, locally. That year we ran Firefox, CmapTools, and it seems like a few other things locally. It worked so well, we ran things as localapps last year as well (but with 10.04, not 9.04 like the previous year). Well, this year we made the leap to 'fatcleints' where basically everything is run locally. This means that now we can use the computer-interface probes like LabPro. Things are going smoothly this year. We did make sure that all of our P4's have a gig of RAM, though and are at least 2.2 GHz. Anyway, this is a long way of saying that you may want to look into fat clients or at least localapps instead of thin clients. They are all part of the LTSP system, however.<br> <br> For managing your computers (like what a teacher needs to do, sometimes sharing screens or locking screens for example) I would recommend looking into epoptes--"Overseer". You'll find that at <a href="http://epoptes.org" target="_blank">epoptes.org</a>. I think that Thin Client Manager and Pessalus haven't been maintained--someone correct me if I'm wrong.<br> <br> About making user accounts, I didn't really understand your concerns. I finally got LDAP working this year (!) but before this I've just created the accounts using the 'users and groups' app or through the command line. However, at the start of the year to import lots of users I used webmin--always been happy with it for the limited things I ask it to do. I've never really had to do anything special with user accounts, they just work like one would expect. I've dabbled with SAMBA sharing for shared folders and it has worked OK but haven't done much with it lately.<br> <br> My experience is that there's a big learning curve to get everything working like you want it, but when it is, it is painless!<br> <br> Good luck,<br> David G<br> <div><div></div><div class="h5"><br> <br> <br> On Oct 27, 2011, at 7:29 PM, Dave Wilson wrote:<br> <br> > Hi,<br> ><br> > I have a project underway which refers to a room of 30 machines, having about 160 users over a weekly period.<br> ><br> > I have downoaded 11.10 and used it in live mode successfully and then installed it on the hard disk. It works well, but I am considering the real deployment of this system.<br> ><br> > I intend to go for a system based on the use of two LAN cards, but I am not too worried about the hardware but more of the practical details of managing a network of this type and what is needed. I would be grateful for comments and recommendations under the following headings.<br> ><br> > (1) I wish to give the users access to both a home folder and access possibly to other Read Only folders I designate. I believe this is controlled by NFS. Is this correct ? Is this already involved ? Asuming that this is the case what mechanism do the clients use at their desktops to access home folders etc ?<br> ><br> > (2) I understand that the Thin Client Manager is used for general client control and calls upon Pessulus to lockdown clients. Is all this provided already or is it necessary to download the manager?<br> ><br> > (3) There would appear to be a lot of things going on here that have affects in various places and for example I can see that the creation of a new user would need to have an effect on nfs in terms of designating a new home folder etc. Is there a webmin type of piece of software that handles the integration of these functions so that the addition of a new user automatically causes the changes required?<br> ><br> > I would be very grateful for any comments that can point me in the right direction.<br> ><br> > Regards<br> ><br> ><br> > Dave<br> ><br> ><br> ><br> > Sent from my iPad<br> > --<br> > ubuntu-education mailing list<br> > <a href="mailto:ubuntu-education@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-education@lists.ubuntu.com</a><br> > Modify settings or unsubscribe at: <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-education" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-education</a><br> <br> <br> --<br> ubuntu-education mailing list<br> <a href="mailto:ubuntu-education@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-education@lists.ubuntu.com</a><br> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-education" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-education</a><br> </div></div></blockquote></div><br></div>