"ICT Support Officer" wrote:

...

The bottom line is anyone coming over from the dark side WILL have to compromise or make a sacrifice to time in some areas. The world WOULD be a better place but then people should be allowed to choose. If they choose proprietary then so be it.

Just one little point here. At the end of the day, it is the tax

payers

money that schools are putting to good use (or more appropriately; wasting). I am a tax payer and it shames me to find that thousands of pounds are wasted on Propriety products in schools. That is why UK is such an expensive country to live in. Do school governors think that this money grows on trees. It's your money and my money they deduct from our salaries.

I see your point but I am not convinced that its a terrible waste of money. How does open source get created. Where do these people get the time? The amount of money spent on software is minor comp[ared to the salaries of the teachers. -- Colin McQueen

John Dean wrote:

On Monday 01 December 2003 21:10, Colin McQueen wrote:

...

"ICT Support Officer" wrote:

...

...

The bottom line is anyone coming over from the dark side WILL have to compromise or make a sacrifice to time in some areas. The world WOULD be a better place but then people should be allowed to choose. If they choose proprietary then so be it.

Just one little point here. At the end of the day, it is the tax

payers

...

money that schools are putting to good use (or more appropriately; wasting). I am a tax payer and it shames me to find that thousands of pounds are wasted on Propriety products in schools. That is why UK is such an expensive country to live in. Do school governors think that this money grows on trees. It's your money and my money they deduct from our salaries.

I see your point but I am not convinced that its a terrible waste of money. How does open source get created. Where do these people get the time?

If you don't know the answer to that question then you should be on this list

I am on this list ;-) I still don't know the answer. i'd love to have the time to support open source by creating but work, other causes and family take up too much time (not in that order of priority) and do come first

The amount of money spent on software is minor comp[ared to the

...

salaries of the teachers.

-- Colin McQueen

-- Colin McQueen

<snip>

...

...

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I see your point but I am not convinced that its a terrible waste of money. How does open source get created.?

With a computer, compiler, linker, set of function libraries and a lot of time and effort, that's how it gets created

...

...

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Where do these people get the time?

We make time. Three years of my life have gone into my project, Rekall

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If you don't know the answer to that question then you should be on this list

I am on this list ;-) I still don't know the answer. i'd love to have the time to support open source by creating but work, other causes and family take up too much time (not in that order of priority) and do come first

You attitude suggests to me that you would never make it in the OS movement. We give up our spare time because we believe in what we are doing is for the common good.

That's a little condemming. What attitude is that then? What's wrong with asking questions. Is that not allowed here?

You would do well to read Richard M. Stallman's book, "The Cathedral and the Bazzar" then you will know a little bit about what motivates the Open Scourse Movement.

I didn't ask about the motivation I asked about the time. I spend a lot of time on things I believe in. Most people do. I was wondering where people put open source in their list of priorities? I listed mine. Yes that means I probably cannot contribute to the OS movement much but I would hope that my questions are contributing. If people think not then I'll stop. Please email me privately if that is your point of view.

Believe me it has nothing to do with saving the Government money, or your school for that matter.

The common good is an interesting phrase. I will have to think about that one. And I will read the book. Is it available online?

...

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The amount of money spent on software is minor comp[ared to the

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salaries of the teachers.

-- Colin McQueen

-- Colin McQueen

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-help@suse.com

-- Colin McQueen

[quotes not fully attributed as I have edited them]

...

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How does open source get created. Where do these people get the time?

If you don't know the answer to that question then you shouldn't be on this list

I am on this list ;-) I still don't know the answer.

The list is open to all. I am sure Colin actually knows the answer, although it took me many years to work it out. I wrote a private paper last year in an (unsuccessful) attempt to explain it to someone who I wanted to persuade to make his software available for free. What I wrote is on http://www.felsted.essex.sch.uk/~cchd/software.html and I reckon the dynamics are unstoppable for items of sofware small enough to be encompassed by one person. I still do not completely understand how the economics are sustainable in the long term for large items (such as Linux, Apache, Mozilla and OpenOffice) that need a team of full-time programmers. But there is no evidence that the Microsoft model is sustainable in the long term, either - indeed, there are several likely calamity scenarios for that model anyway. -- Christopher Dawkins, Felsted School, Dunmow, Essex CM6 3JG 01371-822698, mobile 07816 821659 cchd@felsted.essex.sch.uk

On Monday 01 December 2003 21:43, Colin McQueen wrote:

John Dean wrote:

...

On Monday 01 December 2003 21:10, Colin McQueen wrote:

...

"ICT Support Officer" wrote:

...

...

The bottom line is anyone coming over from the dark side WILL have to compromise or make a sacrifice to time in some areas. The world WOULD be a better place but then people should be allowed to choose. If they choose proprietary then so be it.

Just one little point here. At the end of the day, it is the tax

payers

...

money that schools are putting to good use (or more appropriately; wasting). I am a tax payer and it shames me to find that thousands of pounds are wasted on Propriety products in schools. That is why UK is such an expensive country to live in. Do school governors think that this money grows on trees. It's your money and my money they deduct from our salaries.

I see your point but I am not convinced that its a terrible waste of money. How does open source get created. Where do these people get the time?

If you don't know the answer to that question then you should be on this list

I am on this list ;-) I still don't know the answer. i'd love to have the time to support open source by creating but work, other causes and family take up too much time (not in that order of priority) and do come first

You don't have to contribute just use it. You will find it a totally liberating experience. garry

...

The amount of money spent on software is minor comp[ared to the

...

salaries of the teachers.

-- Colin McQueen

-- Colin McQueen

On Monday 01 December 2003 21:10, Colin McQueen wrote:

"ICT Support Officer" wrote:

...

...

The bottom line is anyone coming over from the dark side WILL have to compromise or make a sacrifice to time in some areas. The world WOULD be a better place but then people should be allowed to choose. If they choose proprietary then so be it.

Just one little point here. At the end of the day, it is the tax

payers

...

money that schools are putting to good use (or more appropriately; wasting). I am a tax payer and it shames me to find that thousands of pounds are wasted on Propriety products in schools. That is why UK is such an expensive country to live in. Do school governors think that this money grows on trees. It's your money and my money they deduct from our salaries.

I see your point but I am not convinced that its a terrible waste of money. How does open source get created. Where do these people get the time? The amount of money spent on software is minor comp[ared to the salaries of the teachers.

Stop buying proprietary software and employ more teachers then? regards garry

-- Colin McQueen

----- Original Message ----- From: "garry saddington"

Stop buying proprietary software and employ more teachers then? regards

I'm increasingly coming around to Ian's suggestion to use the money to develop specific educational software (but don't tell him I said that). BBC Linux anyone ???? Darren Smith

On Tuesday 02 December 2003 00:21, ICT Support Officer wrote:

My original post about how taxpayers' money is wasted brought about a good response and I am so pleased. There has been so many of you with strong hearts and most of all strong voice except for a minor few.

I would also like to mention LEA and their inefficiency providing support to schools in terms of so called ICT. No doubt many of you are aware that National grid for learning has been brought about and we seem to have some compulsory broadband connections forced upon us. So far I found the system unworkable because there are private companies involved. For example I wanted to run the school web server from school but the ISP will not provide a public IP address for the school. They also seem reluctant to re-root requests through their DNS to the private IP range they allocated for us in order to access school servers on any port. I proposed to my school management but LEA IT department gave us a bashful

I could go on but my point here is that it is not just Open Source software issue but other services too. Again we pay thousands of pounds for these services but we do not get back all the services we want. !!!Wasting the tax payers money issue here again!!!!

This is exactly what we have done with our broadband supplier. There was some murmerings about unsupported protocols (open ssh !!) but in the end they gave us two IP addresses re-routed to our internal range. Since we are paying for these services I believe that you can go elsewhere for them :-) regards garry

On Tue, Dec 02, 2003 at 08:50:24AM +0000, ian wrote:

We remotely manage the Linux servers of around a dozen schools and broadband ignorance is a real pain in the whatsit. Eventually (sometimes in excess of 6 months) the LEA/consortium realise that SSH is a secure

Good to know I'm not the only person to have encountered this attitude. I managed to annoy quite a few people by being equally boneheaded. (At one time using the RBC for web browsing only, with an ISDN connection to a regular ISP. Until they sorted their lives out.)

method and the devil and his cohorts are not going to invade their schools because we want to open a port for SSH access. We have had schools threatened with OFSTED, the DfES etc for not paying a lot of money to be connected to the broadband and then they are expected to compromise their whole IT strategy when their understanding of the issues is 10 times that of the LEA. We get banal things like ADSL is no good because they need videoconferencing only to find that the reality is that they can only videoconference locally because the security won't allow them to do it out of the consortium - fat lot of good for a specialist language college. How are members of the community supposed

But they promise there will be an H.323 to PSTN gateway being installed somewhere around "next Tuesday". (Presumably once someone can figure which overpriced propriatary product to use since going to http://www.openh323.org must be too much like hard work...)

to access the school for passing homework etc from home to school?

SCP works quite nicely, even with Windows machines. -- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763

On Tue, 2003-12-02 at 08:50, Colin McQueen wrote:

Hi

...

I could go on but my point here is that it is not just Open Source software issue but other services too. Again we pay thousands of pounds for these services but we do not get back all the services we want. !!!Wasting the tax payers money issue here again!!!!

But there just is NOT the expertise in schools or at LEAs to handle open source. It may come but its not there yet.

I really think a touch of pragmatism is needed here.

So what is your LEA's strategy for change? -- ian

...

National grid for learning has been brought about and we seem to have some compulsory broadband connections forced upon us. So far I found the system unworkable because there are private companies involved. For example I wanted to run the school web server from school but the ISP will not provide a public IP address for the school. They also seem reluctant to re-root I don't think you can really knock LEAs or ISPs for not wanting to open ports in their firewalls to allow traffic into schools. Approximately 100% of UK schools do not have access to the technical skills to maintain a secure network which is exposed to the internet. I say approximately, because there are obviously a tiny few who do, and most of them will have representatives on this list :)

Even when you've had the wit to stick a gnu/linux or bsd box between yourself and the outside world, you are surely fighting a losing battle if you have a couple of hundred windows boxes running IE and Outlook on the other side of it. To compound the problem, you also have a pile of portables which staff take home and connect to the internet, before plugging them back into the school network to unleash their dubious payloads. If I was responsible for this in an LEA I would insist that somebody from the school sat, and passed with flying colours, a very scary network security exam, before they'd get me to open any ports :) -- Phil Driscoll

On Tuesday 02 December 2003 12:30, ICT Support Officer wrote:

...

...

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National grid for learning has been brought about and we seem to have some compulsory broadband connections forced upon us. So far I found the system unworkable because there are private companies involved.

What on earth has being a private company got to do with having dynamic or static IPs. When I signed up for my boardband connection I was given the option of a single dynamic IP or 8 static IPs. Of course with the 8 IP optin you have to buy a ADSL modem/router, which I did. My modem/router is connected to a 16 port switch. Also my modem router has a built in firewall and it capable of handling 256 simultaneous connections through a single port (I would need 16x16 port hubs/switches to do that). In theory my 4 port ADSL modem/router could handle 256x4 = 1024 internet connections

...

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For example I wanted to run the school web server from school but the ISP will not provide a public IP address for the school. They also seem reluctant to re-root

I think you mean re-boot. Why would you want your ISP to re-boot, after all you are running the servers not them. They just provide you with your net access.

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I don't think you can really knock LEAs or ISPs for not wanting to open ports

ISPs don't close ports. The is your responsibility.

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in their firewalls to allow traffic into schools. Approximately 100% of UK schools do not have access to the technical skills to maintain a secure network which is exposed to the internet. I say approximately, because there are obviously a tiny few who do, and most of them will have representatives on this list :) Even when you've had the wit to stick a gnu/linux or bsd box between yourself and the outside world, you are surely fighting a losing battle if you have a couple of hundred windows boxes running IE and Outlook on the other side of it.

This is unbelievable. If you have the correct equippment i.e. an ADSL modem/ router with built-in firewall it would not matter if you are running Windows, Linux or both. There is plenty of content filtering software available for all platforms

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To compound the problem, you also have a pile of portables which staff take home and connect to the internet, before plugging them back into the school network to unleash their dubious payloads.

Network and Computer security is not all about software. It should include written policies and procedures. I used to work for the worlds biggest oil producer. We had over 70,000 computers connected to the company network and the Internet. From what I read in some Computer mag. the company I worked for has the biggest hetrogenious network in the world. There was everything from the ancient Apple IIe up to two massive CRAY 2 super-computers. As you can well imagine a system like that is a security nightmare. All security problems as far as I remember came from inside of the company. All of these problems concerned virus attacks on *Windows* machines (in the 10 years in worked for Saudi Aramco was a single UNIX machine compromised), because of people bringing infected floppies and CDs into work. Once the policy was tightened up we never again had problems with virii.

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If I was responsible for this in an LEA I would insist that somebody from

the

...

school sat, and passed with flying colours, a very scary network security exam, before they'd get me to open any ports :)

That is totally unnecessary and over the top. The first thing you should is to get your headman to draft a security policy and then back that up with regular audits. Like I have already said you are more likely to suffer from security problems from the inside than from the outside. Hackers arn't interested in breaking into a schools network.

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-- Phil Driscoll

I can knock them all as far as I can throw them. Just a question for you -> When you and millions of others are connecting to their broadband service from home or office do they not have full access to all the ports. I am in fact running my own mail and web servers from home using my broadband connection. Why should schools be an exception. All the ISp's are doing is providing a pipe between you and the Internet. I think you missed the point here

Your statistics (almost %100) is also wrong. Almost everyone here on this this are to some extent are proficient enough to do that. In any case the security issue is for schools to worry about and not the ISP's. If schools don't have the technical experts to run a school network then they should invest in hiring skilled technicians but I know that they do.

Regards

M Gural

-- Regards John http://www.totalrekall.co.uk john@totalrekall.co.uk

On Tue, 2003-12-02 at 13:47, Phil Driscoll wrote:

They don't care. What will hack into the school network is a bit of software already running on somebody else's compromised machine. It won't know it's hacking a school, it will just run through a big pile of vulnerabilities until it gets in. Once it's in, it will start attacking from your machines.

Let's just go back to first principles for a minute. The DfES E-learning consultation on strategy implies they want schools to become information hubs for their communities. So what is the strategy? Read the consultation document, there is no strategy proposed - there is a desire for this but no real idea about what it involves or the details of how it might be achieved either in terms of cost or technical issues. So we go blindly into LEA consortia because we are told economies of scale will make it less expensive. (Who told them that? Probably BT, RM et al who then make a nice little earner) In many cases we can provide a set of fully managed and secure servers including server support, unlimited telephone support and as much practical bandwidth as the school wants and upgrade the servers every 3 years cheaper than the LEA connection. When I find that a LEA tells a school that it can't have Linux servers because they don't support it and I say you don't need to, we will and then they say you can't have remote access except using a Windows only solution I get just a tad annoyed. Then after a meeting they refer me to the same clueless minion who I know doesn't understand diddle. Why do we make the automatic assumption that the LEA knows best and the school can't make its own security arrangements? Don't assume external security is all that is needed. Any kid that can hack the local security in their school from inside can set up a tunnel and let anyone in. If a school lets us in and sanctions it there is no firewall we can't get through. No system is ever going to be 100% secure its a compromise between convenience to the user and risk. One of the strengths of the Internet is that its devolved. If I leave my machine open its *my* responsibility if it gets hacked and it won't affect anyone else but me. As soon as I am lumped into an arbitrary group I get absolved of responsibility but the downside is I also lose control over my own machine. Dependency culture. Ok, for primary schools there might have to be some sort of grouping to get sufficient economy of scale but there is a balance to be had between the restrictions of everyone having to do the same thing across several LEAs with a megalithic bureaucratic structure that is completely unresponsive to individuals and a few schools sharing resources. Large secondary schools have the budgets to be largely self-sufficient in these things. What happened to local management of schools? Yes, I have a vested interest because I run a small company and its unlikely that we will get a LEA contract to manage an entire broadband consortium, and our business is dealing with enlightened and innovative schools at grass roots, but consider that we have probably put more KDE desktops in schools than all BECTA approved suppliers put together. If you make the system so centralised that is squeezes out small businesses you can say goodbye to innovation like getting Linux at the desktop into schools. BECTa is now doing a TCO survey including the schools we have supported - fortunately we now have some significant case studies and this is another step on the road to acceptance. I can understand why few companies have done what we have. Its extremely hard work, there is a lot of potential risk to the company and it seems everyone simply wants to put obstacles in the way. But in the end its worth making the effort because its the right thing to do. Its a matter of patience, eating the elephant a bite at a time and not giving up because the task seems impossible. Stranger things have happened throughout history than us managing a group of Linux servers through an LEA firewall ;-) -- ian

MJ Ray wrote:

On 2003-12-02 19:10:32 +0000 ian wrote:

...

Don't assume external security is all that is needed. Any kid that can hack the local security in their school from inside can set up a tunnel and let anyone in.

...or plug a wireless access point into a spare network socket, as those of you who heard Eddie Bleasdale's talk in April may remember. Schools really should run their own security regardless of any LEA remote services, including intrusion detection and network integrity checks.

This is an important point. But remember that LEAs are actually in the hands of their IT services that also run may be responsible for the other council departments. They are also worried about the inside of their firewall IYSWIM. -- Colin McQueen

ian wrote: <snip>

When I find that a LEA tells a school that it can't have Linux servers because they don't support it and I say you don't need to, we will and then they say you can't have remote access except using a Windows only solution I get just a tad annoyed. Then after a meeting they refer me to the same clueless minion who I know doesn't understand diddle.

You see its this judgmental attitude that gets my back up. Even if they are clueless, they have a right to a viewpoint and a right to doing their job their way. To call someone this without knowing them or their background is just plainly wrong. <snip>

thing to do. Its a matter of patience, eating the elephant a bite at a time and not giving up because the task seems impossible.

I agree with this. Its important to not come across as a raving evangelist or people will be scared off. Value the work people in schools are doing with all their fears and despite that they may supporting a different system, that you may have a negative view on. Don't make them feel like they are just in the way and that you know best. You'll only come across as arrogant or loony. If open source is better people will see that in the end if its revealed to them in the right way. -- Colin McQueen

On 2003-12-02 21:16:48 +0000 Colin McQueen wrote:

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You see its this judgmental attitude that gets my back up.

Ian's in the field still. He's ever likely to be more frustrated than those of us who aren't. I'm still in the field of teaching with and supporting people who have to make decisons and I've yet to meet one who did not want to make the right decision. We have the people we have to work with. I doubt Ian would call the person a clueless minion to their face, so why here?

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Even if they are clueless, they have a right to a viewpoint and a right to doing their job their way.

That doesn't mean they should be allowed to effectively prevent some choices of suppliers. As they say, "your right to swing your arm ends at my face". If they have the responsibility then they do have the right, that's the

MJ Ray wrote: point of responsibility.

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To call someone this without knowing them or their background is just plainly wrong.

For all you know, the offending person in that anecdote really was clueless.

Which I acknowledged

To call Ian "judgmental" without knowing the case is plainly wrong. IMHO its was not. I believe its an insult to call someone a clueless minion whether they are or not.

But on looking up the definition of the word I have to say I used the wrong word here so I apologise Ian.

Say you think he's being harsh if you want, but please don't add more insults to the bonfire.

It wasn't meant to be an insult, having looked up "harsh" as well I stand corrected. Ian don't be so harsh. ;-) -- Colin McQueen

On Tue, Dec 02, 2003 at 10:33:38PM +0000, Colin McQueen wrote:

MJ Ray wrote:

...

On 2003-12-02 21:16:48 +0000 Colin McQueen wrote:

...

Even if they are clueless, they have a right to a viewpoint and a right to doing their job their way.

That doesn't mean they should be allowed to effectively prevent some choices of suppliers. As they say, "your right to swing your arm ends at my face". If they have the responsibility then they do have the right, that's the point of responsibility.

Are you sure that the local government ombudsman would agree with you? An LEA preventing a school from using a supplier, without a very good reason (e.g. criminal investigation, insolvent trading, etc), sounds very much like maladministration. -- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763

On Tue, 2003-12-02 at 21:16, Colin McQueen wrote:

ian wrote:

<snip>

...

When I find that a LEA tells a school that it can't have Linux servers because they don't support it and I say you don't need to, we will and then they say you can't have remote access except using a Windows only solution I get just a tad annoyed. Then after a meeting they refer me to the same clueless minion who I know doesn't understand diddle.

You see its this judgmental attitude that gets my back up.

You might have a slightly different view of it if your business and the livlihood of several people depended on it and it was personally costing you the consultancy fees the school is paying. In any case I'm an ex-RgI and trained to be judgemental ;-)

Even if they are clueless, they have a right to a viewpoint and a right to doing their job their way.

As a taxpayer I don't believe they have a right to be clueless! I also don't believe it is desirable to simply allow this type of thing to go on unchallenged - its the reason we have the mess around us in the first place. Do you think a competent RgI would take this view of a clueless teacher? Somehow I don't think so. I have absolutely no quibble with LEA people who are prepared to listen to sense and to be reasonable - most are even if it takes them 6 months to implement something simple, but quite frankly I have not a lot of patience with people who waste my time and put the school's costs up unnecessarily.

To call someone this without knowing them or their background is just plainly wrong.

Er, I have had dialogue with the person and so has a graduate techie. It was at the Headteachers request that I became involved. My point is why organise a meeting - cost of about 5 senior managers for half a day - then end up referring me to someone I had already established didn't know how to resolve the problem who I had already had communications with by E-mail and telephone? If I ran my business like that I wouldn't be in business long. Its nothing to with personalities, its about management and technological competence.

<snip>

...

thing to do. Its a matter of patience, eating the elephant a bite at a time and not giving up because the task seems impossible.

I agree with this. Its important to not come across as a raving evangelist or people will be scared off.

On the other hand there are times when it is necessary to stand up and be counted.

Value the work people in schools are doing with all their fears and despite that they may supporting a different system, that you may have a negative view on.

Well we install as many Windows systems as Linux ones so that isn't really an issue. My view is that we give objective advice on alternatives and value for money but in the end we will install and support what the client wants. In fact that was the entire reason for setting up the company. As a consultant I got brassed off with companies telling the schools X was impossible so they had to have Y only to find that the real reason was that the company only supplied Y. I will also fight the client's corner - in this case it was the Head who was brassed off with the LEA because they were saying things that the head had done in a previous school in a different part of the country were not possible meaning they had no experience of it.

Don't make them feel like they are just in the way and that you know best. You'll only come across as arrogant or loony.

Alternatively you can come across as wishy washy and sitting on the fence. There is an old saying. If you are hot or cold I'll swallow you up if you are luke warm I'll spit you out. Virtually all our business comes from word of mouth recommendation. I guess some of my customers think I'm an arrogant loony, but maybe they like to have the arrogant loony on their side ;-)

If open source is better people will see that in the end if its revealed to them in the right way.

The right way is different for different audiences. In this mailing list I think a bit of plain speaking is reasonably appropriate. I wouldn't take the same approach in some other circumstances but we are on this list not in other circumstances. Neither would I take anything on Usenet or mailing lists personally. Vigorous debate is healthy. -- ian

...

...

When I find that a LEA tells a school that it can't have Linux servers because they don't support it and I say you don't need to, we will and then they say you can't have remote access except using a Windows only solution I get just a tad annoyed. Then after a meeting they refer me to the same clueless minion who I know doesn't understand diddle.

You see its this judgmental attitude that gets my back up. Even if they

------------

Sounds more like Ian is complaining about LEAs (plural) with rather a "judgmental attitude".

...

are clueless, they have a right to a viewpoint and a right to doing their job their way. To call someone this without knowing them or their background is just plainly wrong.

Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763

This is a SUSE forum or other, is it not? The fact that we are on this list is because we all support open Source. If I support Liverpool Football club, I would not normaly join Arsenal. So, all opinions here however harsh they may be are for us alone. When on independent grounds with other people we would use different phrases and aproaches. All comments made by Ian or any other which may sound judgemental or "harsh" in this list are perfectly acceptable. I wish there were more people like Ian or Mark here. M Gural

"ICT Support Officer" wrote:

...

...

...

When I find that a LEA tells a school that it can't have Linux servers because they don't support it and I say you don't need to, we will and then they say you can't have remote access except using a Windows only solution I get just a tad annoyed. Then after a meeting they refer me to the same clueless minion who I know doesn't understand diddle.

You see its this judgmental attitude that gets my back up. Even if they

------------

...

Sounds more like Ian is complaining about LEAs (plural) with rather a "judgmental attitude".

...

are clueless, they have a right to a viewpoint and a right to doing their job their way. To call someone this without knowing them or their background is just plainly wrong.

---

...

Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763

This is a SUSE forum or other, is it not? The fact that we are on this list is because we all support open Source. If I support Liverpool Football club, I would not normaly join Arsenal. So, all opinions here however harsh they may be are for us alone. When on independent grounds with other people we would use different phrases and aproaches.

Well this is where we differ then. I have only one approach and that (as people on this list no doubt are becoming aware) often gets me into trouble. I'd defend myself in saying that my offences are not deliberate. I do try to show I appreciate people despite differences.

All comments made by Ian or any other which may sound judgemental or "harsh" in this list are perfectly acceptable. I wish there were more people like Ian or Mark here.

Well of course you do. We all want people around us that agree with us and that speak up for a cuase we believe in. They both don't just talk the talk they walk the walk. But I still maintain that a block to open source in schools is the perception many people in schools have of the people pushing it. I too appreciate Ian's work and value his opinions. I have learned loads fom him and was very close to going with his company when I was at Romsey School. (IIRC). However, I know of one scghool where Ian has not come across well because he seemed too evangelistic. A price he has to pay perhaps. In conclusion (I don't intend to continue on this anymore, I am bothering too many people and obviously don't have the correct approach) I don't agree with the negative view many people on this list have of LEAs and teachers in school. I believe the majority do a good job in very difficult circumstances. I am pro open source but not against proprietary software. I believe that I can be a useful aid to getting more open source into schools, indeed I have done so. If I can contribute to production e.g. an open source version of KS3 curriculum material I will do so. I have asked on the Hampshire secondary co-ordinators mailing list for info back on use of open source in schools, at the same time putting in adverts for about a dozen open source projects. If anyone is interested in the results of my survey let me know, I should have something to put out in the new year. BTW Merry Christmas ^ / \ / \ | -- Colin McQueen

--- ian wrote: > On Wed, 2003-12-03 at 14:57, Colin McQueen wrote: [..snip..]

...

Well this is where we differ then. I have only one approach and that (as people on this list no doubt are becoming aware) often gets me into trouble. I'd defend myself in saying that my offences are not deliberate. I do try to show I appreciate people despite differences.

Don't we all? E-mail is just about the best medium for misunderstandings, polarising debates and generally getting things out of proportion :-) I constantly have to tell some of our support people to talk to people on the phone, because E-mail is not always the best way of communicating.

You're telling me. I have had enough scrapes on this list over the years to know *that* :)

...

...

All comments made by Ian or any other which may sound judgemental or "harsh" in this list are perfectly acceptable. I wish there were more people like Ian or Mark here.

You can remove your head from out of......

...

Well of course you do. We all want people around us that agree with us and that speak up for a cuase we believe in. They both don't just talk the talk they walk the walk. But I still maintain that a block to open source in schools is the perception many people in schools have of the people pushing it.

I too appreciate Ian's work and value his opinions. I have learned loads fom him and was very close to going with his company when I was at Romsey School. (IIRC).

However, I know of one scghool where Ian has not come across well because he seemed too evangelistic. A price he has to pay perhaps.

Please -- why do you come here "preaching" to us. We all do our jobs (well, OK, so I am still at Uni) to the best of our abilities and with our own unique flair.

Its a price anyone marketing anything has to pay. Some kids are turned off by evangelical teachers, but I think many more respond better to a teacher who is passionate about what they teach.

Evangelists can often lead to arrogance.

...

In conclusion (I don't intend to continue on this anymore, I am bothering too many people and obviously don't have the correct approach)

I think you are putting up some useful devils advocate. Its far too easy to just become a mutual admiration society. Two sides are needed to have a debate and it takes bottle to take the minority view - everyone on this list should understand that :-) Hopefully we can be passionate without falling out.

While I am all for the tremendous effort that a lot of you put towards Linux and the education, I think that we have detracted from what the purpose of this list is for. It is not a political-debate list. It is about SuSE Linux.

...

I don't agree with the negative view many people on this list have of LEAs and teachers in school. I believe the majority do a good job in very difficult circumstances.

So do I, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement and in the context of FLOSS in education some feathers are going to get ruffled. Its the nature of change. Read some Michael Fullan on educational change in general. It helps put the change in technology into some sort of wider perspective.

We're all entitled to our own opinions... -- Thomas Adam ===== "The Linux Weekend Mechanic" -- http://linuxgazette.net "TAG Editor" -- http://linuxgazette.net ________________________________________________________________________ Download Yahoo! Messenger now for a chance to win Live At Knebworth DVDs http://www.yahoo.co.uk/robbiewilliams

How many school network configurations include a reserve 'logon' and curriculum file-serving capability? For example, such a capability might comprise a reserve PC that's normally held off-line ready to be deployed when a school's principal server suffer a catastrophic crash ...note my use of the word 'when' here, rather than 'if'! An alternative configuration might comprise a pre-configured server OS on a hard-disk that can easily be installed in one of the school's faster curriculum workstations. This would at least provide a logon and a restricted file-serving capability, in case resurrecting a downed server proves far more problematic than at first anticipated. The reason I ask is because at the two schools where I did my teaching practice both suffered major problems with their principal curriculum servers. In both cases a subsequent server crash brought down the entire school-wide network for a continuous period in excess of four whole weeks!!! These problems were compounded by the fact all 200 plus PCs at each school were configured to be completely inoperable unless the user first 'logged on' to the school network. Furthermore both these schools experienced such difficulty restoring previously backed-up data, most students lost all of their coursework including work that was awaiting assessment. At one school they eventually narrowed their server problem down to mismatched dual Pentium processors installed on the motherboard compounded by an intermittently faulty SCSI cable that served to repeatedly scramble the data held on the Raid-5 disk array. At the other school they had previously suffered some apparently minor data corruptions (from their users point-of-view) that prevented their tape backup system from completing a full backup. And then a few months later the server crashed! Is the truly catastrophic scale of these disasters typical of your experience within other UK schools? ...and surely this represents an ideal opportunity to get Linux into schools, initially in the form of a low-cost (no additional server licences need be purchased) reserve 'login', 'data' and 'Internet access' server capability. David Bowles TeacherLab / Education-Support

On Wed, Dec 03, 2003 at 02:36:52PM +0000, Colin McQueen wrote:

"Mark Evans" wrote:

...

On Tue, Dec 02, 2003 at 09:16:48PM +0000, Colin McQueen wrote:

...

ian wrote:

<snip>

...

...

thing to do. Its a matter of patience, eating the elephant a bite at a time and not giving up because the task seems impossible.

I agree with this. Its important to not come across as a raving evangelist or people will be scared off. Value the work people in

Unless you are either a) an LEA advisor b) evangelising some proprietary product c) both

I'm not sure what you mean here? Are you saying an LEA advisor should never advise using a proprietary product?

I'm saying that there often appears to be a double standard when it comes to promoting software. Also there do appear to be cases of a conflict of interest involving LEA advisors having connections to suppliers.

Also if LEA advisors are so powerful I suggest that that's where the targetting has to be then. Are there any other LEA advisors on this

Sounds like a good idea.

list besides me?

...

...

schools are doing with all their fears and despite that they may supporting a different system, that you may have a negative view on.

People actually working in schools often have little or no voice when it comes to LEAs and especially RBC.

Possibly true but that's not my experience. I felt I was heard. Our school was used as a testing ground by the LEA regarding access through their firewall for example. Groups of ICT teachers in our LEA are put

How do you expect *teachers* to know about things like firewall rules?

onto panells to work with the LEA ICT staff to discuss issues. Of course decisions are not made for the LEA by the teachers.

Unless this was a very unusual LEA there would have been several schools where network managemnt was the responsibility of non teaching staff. Were these people consulted? -- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763

On Tue, Dec 02, 2003 at 01:29:07PM +0000, John Dean wrote:

On Tuesday 02 December 2003 12:30, ICT Support Officer wrote:

...

...

...

...

For example I wanted to run the school web server from school but the ISP will not provide a public IP address for the school. They also seem reluctant to re-root

I think you mean re-boot. Why would you want your ISP to re-boot, after all you are running the servers not them. They just provide you with your net access.

Actually he means "re-route" or more specifically provide a 1:1 NAT between a regular IP and an RFC1918 IP.

...

...

I don't think you can really knock LEAs or ISPs for not wanting to open ports

ISPs don't close ports. The is your responsibility.

The RBC providing connectivity to schools do not behave like regular ISPs.

...

...

To compound the problem, you also have a pile of portables which staff take home and connect to the internet, before plugging them back into the school network to unleash their dubious payloads.

Network and Computer security is not all about software. It should include written policies and procedures. I used to work for the worlds biggest oil producer. We had over 70,000 computers connected to the company network and the Internet. From what I read in some Computer mag. the company I worked for has the biggest hetrogenious network in the world. There was everything from

It's actually homogeneous environments which are most at risk from self propergating malware.

the ancient Apple IIe up to two massive CRAY 2 super-computers. As you can well imagine a system like that is a security nightmare. All security problems as far as I remember came from inside of the company. All of these problems concerned virus attacks on *Windows* machines (in the 10 years in

Wonder if someone will claim that that's just because "Windows is the most popular OS"...

worked for Saudi Aramco was a single UNIX machine compromised), because of people bringing infected floppies and CDs into work. Once the policy was tightened up we never again had problems with virii.

...

...

If I was responsible for this in an LEA I would insist that somebody from

the

...

school sat, and passed with flying colours, a very scary network security exam, before they'd get me to open any ports :)

That is totally unnecessary and over the top. The first thing you should is to get your headman to draft a security policy and then back that up with regular audits. Like I have already said you are more likely to suffer from security problems from the inside than from the outside. Hackers arn't

Back to the LFTs. -- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763

garry saddington wrote:

On Monday 01 December 2003 21:10, Colin McQueen wrote:

...

"ICT Support Officer" wrote:

...

...

The bottom line is anyone coming over from the dark side WILL have to compromise or make a sacrifice to time in some areas. The world WOULD be a better place but then people should be allowed to choose. If they choose proprietary then so be it.

Just one little point here. At the end of the day, it is the tax

payers

...

money that schools are putting to good use (or more appropriately; wasting). I am a tax payer and it shames me to find that thousands of pounds are wasted on Propriety products in schools. That is why UK is such an expensive country to live in. Do school governors think that this money grows on trees. It's your money and my money they deduct from our salaries.

I see your point but I am not convinced that its a terrible waste of money. How does open source get created. Where do these people get the time? The amount of money spent on software is minor comp[ared to the salaries of the teachers.

Stop buying proprietary software and employ more teachers then? regards garry

If I stopped my school buying all proprietary software (including ongoing licensing) we would save about enough to employ 0.75 of a newly qualified teacher

...

-- Colin McQueen

-- Colin McQueen

On Monday 01 December 2003 22:06, Jez Rogers wrote:

ICT Support Officer wrote:

...

...

The bottom line is anyone coming over from the dark side WILL have to compromise or make a sacrifice to time in some areas. The world WOULD be a better place but then people should be allowed to choose. If they choose proprietary then so be it.

Just one little point here. At the end of the day, it is the tax payers money that schools are putting to good use (or more appropriately; wasting). I am a tax payer and it shames me to find that thousands of pounds are wasted on Propriety products in schools. That is why UK is such an expensive country to live in. Do school governors think that this money grows on trees. It's your money and my money they deduct from our salaries.

Whoa! As a chair of governors and an RHCE, I resent you assumption that governors are all in the Microsoft Camp. As our budget is extremely tight this year, I can assure that I am particulary aware of the financial situation.

Governors are charged with ensuring value for money whilst delivering an effective curriculum. Best value does not necessarily mean free, neither does it mean paid for. You can save money, effort or time, but never all three.

Switching away from Microsoft will typically involve time, effort and skills that teachers simply may not have, particulary if they are not full time IT teachers.

Governors don't, and should not, get involved with the nitty gritty of the curriculum contents, they are not qualified to do so. That's why they delegate this to the Head and staff. They can, of course, make sure that alternatives are known about.

I'd dearly love to kick our aging RM system into touch and replace it with something open source. Sadly I'm not aware of an OSS equivalent that'll do the job with the same level of automation, thereby allowing our hard pressed ICT coordinator to concentrate on teaching, not hardware/software maintenance.

There's a market for someone, somewhere.

I'll advise you for free. I am an ICT co-ordinator with a full teaching load and i support 90 workstations running Linux as thin clients and I have a life outside school. Once set up my system just works and thats it. I'll come to you if you want. regards garry

-- jez

Our capacity for understanding is inversely proportional to how much we think we know. The more I know, the more I know I don't know . . .

mailto:jez@jezndi.org

http://www.jezndi.org

On Tue, 2003-12-02 at 08:34, Colin McQueen wrote:

garry saddington wrote: ewhere.

...

I'll advise you for free. I am an ICT co-ordinator with a full teaching load and i support 90 workstations running Linux as thin clients and I have a life outside school. Once set up my system just works and thats it. I'll come to you if you want. regards garry

Does it handle sound and video well? I am only asking because I support schools with thin client solutions and the sound issue is rearing its head much more now.

Use intermediate clients. Say 256 meg of RAM in a discless machine and run the application locally in RAM. Takes pressure off the servers and makes all the local audio etc work. We have these operating in St Monicas Language College in place of a language lab. Its automatic. If on log on the client has sufficient RAM and processing power it will use it locally, if not it runs as a conventional thin client from the server. -- ian

Hello. I have just installed SUSE 9 on a machine from work (as a dual boot) and I intend for sixth formers to be able to come along and log on to a linux box if they choose. When they do I would like it to authenticate their username and password against our windows 2000 AD server. I would also like them to be connected to their network space. I am after some advice on how to do this ;-) PHASE 1 * What further information do I need to get about our current win2k setup * What network software do I need to intall on suse * What settings do I need (I already have proxy and dhcp IPs) * What other questions should I be asking! If I could get some helpful guidance on this to realise this project then I intend to do 2 rooms worth - which should be a nice choice for our students :-) TIA Darren

Thomas Adam wrote on 05.12.2003, 19:58:30:

--- Darren Smith wrote: > Hello.

...

I have just installed SUSE 9 on a machine from work (as a dual boot) and I intend for sixth formers to be able to come along and log on to a linux box if they choose. When they do I would like it to authenticate their username and password against our windows 2000 AD server. I would also like them to be connected to their network space.

I am after some advice on how to do this ;-)

PHASE 1 * What further information do I need to get about our current win2k setup * What network software do I need to intall on suse

Samba, without a doubt.

You can then get that to authenticate against win2k machine, or whatever.

-- Thomas Adam

===== "The Linux Weekend Mechanic" -- http://linuxgazette.net "TAG Editor" -- http://linuxgazette.net

________________________________________________________________________ Download Yahoo! Messenger now for a chance to win Live At Knebworth DVDs http://www.yahoo.co.uk/robbiewilliams

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-help@suse.com

Alan Davies wrote:

Ideally you will need a latest version of SAMBA which has better/improved windbind support. Then you need to go away and read all the documentation.

I looked at the site today. As I understand it 3 (alpha) is the one to use for AD but I could only see versions for suse 8.2 and I am wanting to run 9. We run a network mixed with (among others) NT so I think version 2.whatever should be ok for this.

A course on how to write PAM authentication modules is desirable. - If you learn how to use them - perhaps you could then write a few pages to let a few of us normal mortals into their secrets - especially on how NOT to lock yourself out of the linux box all together.

Ahhh. I'll take that as a warning. My H of D has got various platforms to authenticate on our network so I think I need to make this more of a joint project. He seems to think getting it to authenticate is simple but getting it to connect to their net space on win will be the more complex bit.

Then you join your linux box to Win2K domain using samba and set up winbind and test it - so you can see all users.

That's also what my H of D said today.

Once you have it working - tell us how to do it.

This is interesting. I must admit I was with the ICT support officer on this one and was considering unsubscribing from the list. It seems that although I have had a couple of useful suggestions off list no one is forth coming with a solution. I though it was because the people on the list seem to have a vested interest in Linux in education rather than a desire to get SUSE working in schools. The impression I get from you 2 posts are that no one is forth coming as no one has this working in a real life school on any kind of significant scale! At least - as you said - not by themselves. Darren

On Monday 08 December 2003 18:50, Darren Smith wrote:

This is interesting. I must admit I was with the ICT support officer on this one and was considering unsubscribing from the list. It seems that although I have had a couple of useful suggestions off list no one is forth coming with a solution. I though it was because the people on the list seem to have a vested interest in Linux in education rather than a desire to get SUSE working in schools. The impression I get from you 2 posts are that no one is forth coming as no one has this working in a real life school on any kind of significant scale!

I think that, in fact, lots of us on the list have done things for real on a large scale in a school, but the first thing we did was replace the Windows servers with Gnu/Linux. Consequently we know how to get Samba to behave as PDC and get Windows boxes to authenticate against it, but many of us did this before Winbind came onto the scene, so have no experience of working the other way round. Hence, in spite of wanting to help, we are clueless on the subject :) Cheers -- Phil Driscoll

Can anyone reply to the following message please with full info.... Just saying ..."use samba.." does not answer the questions. Since I also wish to do the same thing as Darren it would be most appreciated .

M Gural

Thanks for both replies! I have had a little look about and am not convinced samba is the way to go. We already use samba at work for file shares and have used it in the past for print serving but from following up the first reply it looks like to use samba you would have to set up a samba server on each pc and tell it all of the usernames and then get this to pass back to the 2k domain. If this is correct then it is obviously not practical for a primary let alone us (large secondary + sixth form). If it is not correct then sorry and I think I need more guidance :-) It seems to me that this list of for (generally) people that want to get SUSE Linux working in there school so *someone* must have done this? I'm not asking for step by step instruction - I'm happy to google or read URLs - but a couple of pointers would be useful and I will happily feed back my experiences for others in the same boat and / or the archives. Cheers in advance. Darren

Alan Davies wrote:

Well I'd like a noddy step by step guide - and I realise the people who could do this are to busy doing greater things to bother about us.

Which is a real shame. If I get this working in school then I know a lot of my sixth former will want to play with it at home. This means their parents will learn about suse. In turn they may tell people they work with. The kids will pass on info at uni. And so on. Darren

On Mon, Dec 01, 2003 at 10:06:30PM +0000, Jez Rogers wrote:

ICT Support Officer wrote:

...

...

The bottom line is anyone coming over from the dark side WILL have to compromise or make a sacrifice to time in some areas. The world WOULD be a better place but then people should be allowed to choose. If they choose proprietary then so be it.

Just one little point here. At the end of the day, it is the tax payers money that schools are putting to good use (or more appropriately; wasting). I am a tax payer and it shames me to find that thousands of pounds are wasted on Propriety products in schools. That is why UK is such an expensive country to live in. Do school governors think that this money grows on trees. It's your money and my money they deduct from our salaries.

Whoa! As a chair of governors and an RHCE, I resent you assumption that governors are all in the Microsoft Camp. As our budget is extremely tight this year, I can assure that I am particulary aware of the financial situation.

Governors are charged with ensuring value for money whilst delivering an effective curriculum. Best value does not necessarily mean free, neither does it mean paid for. You can save money, effort or time, but never all three.

Switching away from Microsoft will typically involve time, effort and skills that teachers simply may not have, particulary if they are not full time IT teachers.

As does "sticking with" Microsoft. Since there is the "upgrade treadmill" with plenty of preasure from various places to "upgrade". Regardles of if the newer version of Windows, Microsoft Office, XYZ application is better than, much the same as or even worst than whatever a school is using at present. Note that the major cost here is likely to be working out how to make the newer version do everything the older version needed to do. Handling having more than one version in place at once, etc.

Governors don't, and should not, get involved with the nitty gritty of the curriculum contents, they are not qualified to do so. That's why they delegate this to the Head and staff. They can, of course, make sure that alternatives are known about.

I'd dearly love to kick our aging RM system into touch and replace it with something open source. Sadly I'm not aware of an OSS equivalent that'll do the job with the same level of automation, thereby allowing our hard pressed ICT coordinator to concentrate on teaching, not hardware/software maintenance.

Maybe you should describe what task(s) it's actually performing. -- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763

----- Original Message ----- From: "Colin McQueen"

I've been in IT teaching for 15 years from RISC OS to Linux and Windows and I am struggling to keep away from MS and Macromedia because they just seems to do more of the leading edge stuff that makes life more convenient. Oh blow, maybe I'm tainted ....

I agree with you about macromedia and I think it will be a while until we see macromedia on Linux. Macromedia have stated that they do not wish to port their stuff to linux as they don't think the market is big enough but recently did a slight u-turn and seem to be supporting the likes of cross over office. Having this suite on linux would be just as - if not more - significant than oo.org. As for MS. I think I will prob have MS office on a PC at home for a long time yet. As for paying to upgrade at work. If someone can give me *educational* reasons for upgrading that will justify the cost I'd be suprised (prob wrong group to expect an answer ;-) Darren Smith