----- Original Message -----
From: Phil Jones
Dear all,
I have updated the following packages which I have written: - Createusers (add users en-masse) - Removeusers (remove users en-masse) - Gethelp (simple help for telnet sessions) - Web User Interface (scan for personal home pages and build an index of them).
All these have been tested successfully on Debian GNU/Linux and Red Hat 6.x. They have not been tested on other platforms yet, specifically, Suse Linux. Could anyone help by testing these packages on the Suse platform? All the packages are freely available under the GPL. The address of the download page is:
http://www.lynxafrica.demon.co.uk/lfsp/
Please post feedback to the list!
Wishes, Phil.
Can I strongly encourage people to "have a go" with this one. We tested it here at St. John's and it went down a treat. Createusers and gethelp are both very simple to use. On the Windows side (an RM Connect 2.32 network) we used Teraterm to telnet to the LFSP linux server [hereinafter referred to as beech]. On the first session I started by simply showing them this rather battered and elderly Gateway P133 where it was sitting on the floor in my office and telling them that its name was beech, that it was running Linux [instant street cred ;-) ], that they all had accounts on it and that they could actually run their accounts on beech from the computer they are on at the moment with a telnet session. I then gave them their usernames [I kept them the same as their normal ones] and passwords, walked them through logging on and then asked for suggestions on what to do next. Those who had read the welcome screen suggested typing 'gethelp' which we did. The utility that really appeals to them with every class I've done this with is 'talk' so I quickly divided them into pairs, pointed them at it and got out of the way before I got run over (as 'twere). Far from being flummoxed by the shell prompt / command line / no bells and whistles environment they very quickly picked up the necessary unix conventions. In a later lesson I introduced them to 'pine' which also comes with the LFSP distribution. Now, these days, you'd think that only your hairiest chested and ancient-est unix hackers would actually use Pine and that whatever its merits its not suitable for the young and impressionable and so on. Not a bit of it, they took to it like ducks to water. It certainly made me think about what user-friendly actually means and revised my views on what sort of clients I need to provide them with. Anyway, if you give what Phil has produced with the Linux For Schools Project a go I can guarantee that both you and your students will have a lot of fun and learn a lot as well. Nigel Nigel Pauli St. John's School, Northwood http://www.st-johns.org.uk/