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February 2002

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131 discussions

Plans for a Linux distro
by Chris Howells 01 Feb '02

01 Feb '02

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hello, It's a long story, but basically I have been increasing annoyed with RM recently. Therefore, I would like to create a Linux distribution which works in a similair manner to RM connect. What do people think of these proposals? I can't guaranteee that it's going to happen or quickly (I'm busy with school and developing KDE), but if some people want to help as well, then it just might :) Linux distribution plan - ------------------------ Target audience: Schools, colleges, universities Aim: To provide a simple to install and administer networking system, which works in a mildly similair manner to RM Connect. Except it actually works (and has decent security), and is based on free software (GNU/Linux). By simply booting a machine with a boot floppy, it should be easy to install Linux on to the macine, after just asking a few questions such as the hostname to use, and the kind of mouse that the box has. Implementation: A Linux distribution based on Red Hat 7.2 would be created. The main reason that Red Hat is suggested is because it can be installed based around the Kickstart installation system, which enables an administrator to stored the installer settings in a configuration file, rather than needing to sit in front of the computer and tend to the the installation every time a question is asked. The distribution will: * Be mainly based on KDE, but provide Blackbox for older hardware (486s and slow Pentiums). There is a possibility that GNOME could be provided as well, but I prefer KDE, and know very little about how GNOME works. Stuff like Kylix and Open Office will also be provided. On the server side, CUPS would be used for the printing system and all machines will have ext3 formatted hard discs. * Have a central administration databases where: - User names and groups are managed - Print and disc quotas are managed - Software can be allocated to a machine/group of machines - The central configuration files are located * On booting up a machine, a system service will check with the server hosting the administrative database whether any software has been allocated/deallocated. If so, it will be downloaded via apache and installed locally, or removed, as appropriate. However, some larger software such as Open Office might want to live permanently on the server. If any configuration files (e.g. /etc/host or similair) have been modified, the updated versions would be downloaded. Perhaps CVS could be used here. * A database such as NIS would probably be used for the administrative database * Upon loggin in (via kdm) the system would map the user's home directory on the server to the /home/user directory on the user name. NFS or SMB are possibilities here. * There will be some user based administrative tools. This will allow the user to change his/her password via a web browser. There will also be an information page showing stuff like information about disc/print quotas. It will also be possible to define the desktop menus (e.g. KMenu) that will appear on the user's desktop. This will be based around .desktop files, and a utility will convert these files to Blackbox menus so that the menu is kept consistent between different desktops. A web based e-mail system could be used to integrate with the IMAP mail server. * The server side would consist of the following pieces of software: - Samba - Apache - Squid - IMAP e-mail server * It will be possible to customise the desktop to default levels. For instance, by most KDE configuration files will be held in a globally readable directory (perhaps in /usr or /etc). Therefore ~/.kde will be mostly read only KDE's architecture makes it very easy to provide configuration files based on this process - -- Cheers, Chris Howells -- chris(a)chrishowells.co.uk, howells(a)kde.org Web: http://chrishowells.co.uk, PGP key: http://chrishowells.co.uk/pgp.txt KDE: http://www.koffice.org, http://edu.kde.org, http://usability.kde.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE8WXfHF8Iu1zN5WiwRAr/MAJ49n+Kg3R8zVZV24NPjlH17VflilQCfRLQO +192PCzfyq91Dl0yJpbPn2k= =sOPz -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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