May 2000 - openSUSE Edu - openSUSE Mailing Lists

Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Marks out of 10!
by Edgehill E-Mail Service 18 May '00

18 May '00

Hi, Here at Edgehill, we are beginning the long and laborious process of adding Linux to our ops suite. At the moment, we are serving public datafiles from a Linux box (K6-II-500, 64MB, 13GB HDD) - that was easy(-ish), taking longer to install from CD's than to set up (SAMBA). We are in the early stages of extending this server to support our agèd 486 machines. My assistant-Guru (Say "Hello", Mark), one of our pupils, is setting this up for me. Early indications are that running X locally, displaying server-run programs will give us a reasonable service, reasonably easily. Mark will be documenting his activities once the service is running. I hope to go over to Linux on the main network server summer 2001. Unfortunately, it looks as though we are stuck with WinWorkstations until the reference software is available for Linux systems ... check through the catalogues, all of the useful encyclopedias, multimedia learning soft etc. is only (yet) available for WinPC/MAC/Acorn. We will be trialling some of these with WINE, and I hope that we will be able to share the results. The bottom line, at the moment, seems to be: 9.5/10 for content, 7/10 for ease (much more complex than Win32, but then, more comprehensive software.) 10/10 for standard documentation (could do with more Idiot-Guides, though <sigh>.) 11/10 for support - even if most of the users seem to speak an alien tongue <grin>. Regards, Paul Ellison <SysAdm(a)edgecoll.clara.net> ICT Manager Edgehill College, IT Department ---------- > From: Graham Spratt <graham.spratt(a)tinyonline.co.uk> > To: suse-linux-uk-schools(a)suse.com > Subject: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Marks out of 10! > Date: 17 May 2000 22:51 > > My name is Graham Spratt, and I'm the Computer Technician at Beccles Middle > School. We are considering changing operating systems from Win NT on our > server and 95 on work stations. One of the systems we are looking at is > SuSE 6.4, I would appreciate any E-Mails of peoples experience with Linux > especially security issues and ease of set up and use. > > > > Regards Graham Spratt > <graham.spratt(a)tinyonline.co.uk> > >

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Re: SIMS and Linux
by kevin.taylor＠powerconv.alstom.com 18 May '00

18 May '00

> Yes, no problem in using Linux and > samba as a server for SIMS. Sorry, I do not work in education (I run a users group), but have an interest in seeing Linux picked up for educational use ... So please excuse me if this is a silly question, but can you tell me what SIMS is (a URL to read up on it would be fine - you don't need to post a full description to the list :-) Ta, Kevin Taylor (Northants Linux Users Group)

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Re: Old PCS as workstations ... [long]
by kevin.taylor＠powerconv.alstom.com 17 May '00

17 May '00

Someone has asked me for some more details about using older machines, so here are a few ramblings that I thought may be of interest to a few more people on this list ... > In a recent suse email you stated that you used > discless pcs as work stations. Well, not exactly work stations - I have them booting up (we were investigation using them in a beowulf cluster). Someone did say that it is possible to use older machines, as long as you have a nice and beafy server to actually run the apps (I think he said he used 512 Mb RAM or something ...) I am not sure how much you know about Linux and networking, so please excuse me if I am explaining things you already know about ... Anyway, in order to get the machines booting, you have to do the following (high level discussion first, then perhaps some pointers to detail :-) 1. Boot from floppy or the network (floppy was easiest for me). 2. Kernel that boots from the floppy must be configured for an 'NFS root file system'. This means that once the kernel has booted, it will mount all its disk space remotely from the server. 3. Server allocated IP addresses to the clients (this happened using the 'RARP' protocol) - so again, kernel support for RARP was required. Also the server had to be running a 'RARP' server. 4. Server had an area on its disk that was basically a complete disk image for each client. In reality, this is actually a disk image using symbolic links to permit the clients and the server to share certain common directories and files. Pointers to documentation on this (maybe in order of relevance ?) : - Thinclient howto (not read this but sounds just the thing :-) - Diskless howto documents (a little out of date but covers the basics) - Diskless-Root NFS howto (the main one for you) - NFS root mini howto (may be obsolete by the above) - NFS root client mini howto (again may be old now) - Beowulf howto (additional reading perhaps) - Boot disk howto (may have some useful bits too) - Remote boot mini howto - Remote X apps mini howto See http://www.linuxdoc.org for the howto documents. Once the machines are up and running, you have various levels of networking that you can achieve : 1. Server is a file server only - In this case, the server provides the file system and applications, but the applications actually run on the client PCs. This is no good to you as your machines are not up to the task of running star office ! 2. Server is a multi-user machine - In this case, the 486 PCs are basically just remote terminals to the server. The 486s are configured to run an 'X terminal' session (via xdm or somesuch) to actually logon and run applications on the server. Basically, in this scenario, all applications are actually running on the server, but the graphics display (output) and keyboard/mouse (input) are redirected over the network to your 486 terminal. As the 486 only has to run the display management and handle keyboard/mouse and ethernet events it should be ok. One last point - it could be worth getting in touch with your local user group, to see if there is anyone local to you who may have done this. Remember though, that Linux is their hobby, they are no substitute for proper 'paid for technical support'. They may well be as knowlegeable or forthcoming, but they may not (or may not be today, or may just be busy, etc :-) Anyway, see http://www.lug.org.uk for a list. Hope This helps, Kevin (Northants Linux Users Group)

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Marks out of 10!
by Graham Spratt 17 May '00

17 May '00

My name is Graham Spratt, and I'm the Computer Technician at Beccles Middle School. We are considering changing operating systems from Win NT on our server and 95 on work stations. One of the systems we are looking at is SuSE 6.4, I would appreciate any E-Mails of peoples experience with Linux especially security issues and ease of set up and use. Regards Graham Spratt <graham.spratt(a)tinyonline.co.uk>

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SIMS and Linux
by Bill Antonia 17 May '00

17 May '00

Bill Antonia Beacon Community College Home e-mail bill(a)beaconhillcott.freeserve.co.uk Work e-mail at(a)beacon.e-sussex.sch.uk Yes, no problem in using Linux and samba as a server for SIMS. Finally got round to it today, creating a copy of SIMS to use for training purposes. Connects ok and launcher runs all the modules. The only problem I have is in the samba access rights. For some silly reason I have to list all users within samba in the "admin users" option, giving them all root access to the shares being exported, then it works. The temporary files which are created when a user logs into SIMS cannot seem to be created. I've tried chmod 777 <directory of share> but it did not give the users enough access. Probably doing something wrong. Even added the following options to the share definition in smb.conf read only = no writeable = yes or even force user = <name of admin user> Still no joy! Any ideas? Oh well, keep on experimenting, tomorrows another day.

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Configuration of this mailing list ....
by kevin.taylor＠powerconv.alstom.com 16 May '00

16 May '00

Is it possible to get replies to this list to go back to the list ? I send my reply, then wait around for it to appear, and then just realised that all emails have 'reply to' set to the sender ... This means that we are probably missing quite a bit of discussion as the responses are not sent back to the list ... Just wondering, Kevin (Northants Linux Users Group)

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Today's welcome message
by Roger Whittaker 15 May '00

15 May '00

Time for a few more people to introduce themselves ... If you're new to the list or haven't posted before, just let us know who you are and what you're doing or hope to do with Linux ... Don't be shy ... The more people use the list, the more useful it will be. -- Roger Whittaker SuSE Linux Ltd The Kinetic Centre Theobald Street Borehamwood Herts WD6 4PJ ---------------------- 020 8387 1482 ---------------------- roger(a)suse-linux.co.uk ----------------------

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Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] System runs like a dog - newbie help please
by kevin.taylor＠powerconv.alstom.com 15 May '00

15 May '00

> Starting applications require LOTS of disc activity > and a LONG time. > eg Netscape takes about 2 minutes to load. I am afraid that running large applications (netscape, star office, etc) in a Linux GUI environment (I am assuming you are running KDE here) does require a lot of memory. In your case, 32 Mb may be a bit tight. If you can upgrade to 64 Mb, you will notice quite a difference running these large applications. Other things to do, include : Installing and running a 'lighter' window manager - I use 'black box with KDE extensions' instead of the standard KDE window manager (this is on the Mandrake disks, not sure about SuSE ?), and find it a *lot* lighter on memory requirements. For example, on a P60/32 Mb RAM, starting 'normal' KDE sets the machine off swapping to disk like mad (it would appear that on my system, KDE runs (with everything else of course) with about 39 Mb in use). Using blackbox keeps this down to 29 Mb. You could also free up some other memory in the system, for example, if you do not require many virtual consoles, reduce this down to (say) 2. Typical installations install 6 (see the file /etc/inittab). You could also see how many instances of the web server (apache) are running - if your machine is a desktop, ie not serving web pages, you could either uninstall this, or cut down the number of servers initialised, etc. There are various ways of freeing up some memory, but an investment to 64 Mb will not go amiss ... I tend to think of Linux + X + KDE + larger apps as requiring the same sort of memory/maching requirements as Windows NT. I run X on a machine with 32 Mb fine - but I don't use the large apps (netscape/star office/etc). Just my thoughts ... Kevin. Northants Linux Users Group.

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Further thoughts on Netscape issue
by James Ogley 15 May '00

15 May '00

An additional thought... Do you have enough swap space on your hard disk? If you only have a small amount, this could account for the slowness of starting apps, and for the disk thrashing... -- James Ogley, SuSE Linux UK Ltd - +44 (0) 20 8 387 4088 @ Work: ogley(a)suse.co.uk www.suse.co.uk @ Home: james(a)rubberturnip.org.uk www.rubberturnip.org.uk ICQ: 57374251 Slashdot: riggwelter (84180)

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Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] System runs like a dog - newbie help please
by James Ogley 15 May '00

15 May '00

I suspect it's the spec of your hardware. You'll notice that you have the minimum amount of RAM recomended for using the GUI. The thing is that certain applications, like Netscape and StarOffice require a fair amount of system resources, especially if other apps are running at the same time... Your video card could also contribute to this effect, a 2 Meg card inevitably doesn't display as well as an equivilant card with more RAM. > Spec > P100, 32MB > Triton M/board > 2GB IDE > Std CD > 3 Com 509B > ATI Rage (2Meg) > Starting applications require LOTS of disc activity and a LONG time. > eg Netscape takes about 2 minutes to load. > Once loaded it works fine - acceptable response times. -- James Ogley, SuSE Linux UK Ltd - +44 (0) 20 8 387 4088 @ Work: ogley(a)suse.co.uk www.suse.co.uk @ Home: james(a)rubberturnip.org.uk www.rubberturnip.org.uk ICQ: 57374251 Slashdot: riggwelter (84180)

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