March 2002 - openSUSE Edu - openSUSE Mailing Lists

RE: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Costs of RM vs "other" options - advo cating a case for open source?
by peterbarber 08 Mar '02

08 Mar '02

Greetings All A slightly different perspective here from someone using RM (and have for 3.5 years). I/We are not happy. When we had a small system (100 stations), things were not too bad, some useful tools, packaged nicely. Bought RM supplied hardware, few problems. Things are different now. Slightly larger network (350 stations) and Connect struggles. RM hardware has gone down in quality and up in price in comparison to better products. (Approx 20 to 30% more expensive per workstation). Licensing, £99.00 per station, this has already been discussed, for what? Annual support costs, just under £3000 for 4 servers. Quality of support? A typical example, we pay for support so if we get a problem which may not be obvious, we sometimes call. On this occasion, we called on a Thursday at 3pm with a problem. Knowing the quality of support, we decided to investigate and got 90% through the problem by home time. Finished the job off on Friday. Got a call the following Thursday with the stuff we had figured out on the first Thursday (one week from the experts, 2 hours from the locals). Hardware support, either sort it out yourself or don't buy new equipment until it has been on the market for at least three months. You want to use a proxy, exchange or print server sir? That will be £1800 for the RM modified operating system for each of them or they won't work with the connect system (Oh yes they do!!) and we will charge you to commission the boxes. Don't forget the increased annual support of about £500 per box. RM's solution, Connect 3, Windows 2k with XP desktop. Dress up the tools already there and charge us about £20,000 (yes, thousand) for the cheap route upgrade. Our reaction, well you guess. We have looked at Linux/Open source but it is hard to put a case that senior management are happy with. On the salary they pay, it is hard to get/keep good technical support. Our solution, migrate to the commercially available stuff (MS, boo hiss I hear from you all) for peanuts (got campus agreement which we pay anyway) and pay less than £3000 per year for 14 servers (manage more than one site, with help). We even get to choose how we want to migrate as opposed to having it dictated to us. Hope this answers the cost questions. P.s. We are also saddled with Sims software, Haven't quite worked out whether it is supposed to be windows or dos based or borland or sql or whatever, nor have they. Peter >===== Original Message From Matt Johnson <johnsonmlw(a)yahoo.com> ===== >An RM story... > >We went RM big style here (before I arrived - justify, >justify). > >We get 'support' (!) from county. If I ring RM, they >say 'erm, no, you're in Herts, we cannot help you'. So >I ring Herts (well I've rung them twice in two years). >Hmm. > >A managed service from RM is a _lot_ of money. I >listened to them at BETT, and they were talking >£10,000 to £18,000 - but that was for a fully managed >service. I don't know exactly what you get for that, >but I'd want to be a damn happy ICT co-ordinator _all_ >year round. > >RM value?... > >£99 for a Community Connect licence. *choke* >Of course, almost the same again for Office and >Publisher licences. *choke* > >Per box. *choke* > >I'm not going to go into the 'super value' that is >'WindowBox'. Luckily, we _didn't_ go that way before I >arrived. Check out the cost of that stuff. >Unbelievable. And, RM assure me that we need it, and >tried to make me justify how we covered the curriculum >without it - in a meeting, in front of my boss! Not >very proffesional now was it. I replied by asking them >to justify us spending our money on it, as it was them >who wanted our money, not us who wanted there product. >Waffle waffle. We said "No, thanks". > >The community connect licence includes a client access >licence for NT, but an NT client access licence isn't >anything like £99 for education (is it £11? I think). > >Putting in 20 boxes? You do the maths on the licences >- then, erm, *choke*. Have RM heard of educational >rates? > >Even if folks insist on Windows for a desktop (with a >linux file server), then you can grab a Windows 98 >licence from your LEA (probably) for maybe £30? (I >think? check it out), and put StarOffice 6 on in a >month or so (when it comes out) for £150 _site_ >licence. Now that sort of money, is at least >'reasonable' on £500 of hardware. At least the >proportions (software:hardware) are not completely >insane. > >--- > >Incidently, the RM stand at BETT mentioned that one of >the _big_ advantages of going to XP with there new >Connect 3, was the much more reasonable log on times. >I pointed out that that clearly implied that the >current system they've been selling has unreasonable >log on times. "Well," the man explained, "sometimes >logons could be slow under certain conditions." I >pointed out that those certain conditions were, erm, >"the use of, erm, 'TOPICS'!" He half smiled, and >nodded. I continued, "We did away with topics two >years ago, and we have had 'reasonable' logons ever >since." > >So what other benefits would it give? We never really >got round to that. > >I'm not anti-RM. The hardware is reliable, and at a >reasonable cost. The boxes turn up on time, and it's >good kit. But, I don't feel I need to say more about >what to avoid. > >-- >Matt > > >__________________________________________________ >Do You Yahoo!? >Try FREE Yahoo! Mail - the world's greatest free email! >http://mail.yahoo.com/ > >-- >To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-unsubscribe(a)suse.com >For additional commands, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-help(a)suse.com

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Samba / Windows 2000 problems
by Phil Driscoll 08 Mar '02

08 Mar '02

Good news - we've just converted the school over from an NT PDC to a gnu linux/samba one and things are almost working perfectly. We have about 30 acorn clients which continue to work perfectly, and similarly about 80 nt4 workstation clients which work fine (but with an unpleasant bodge I'll mention later) and about 30 W2K clients which almost always work perfectly. All the windows clients are working with policies and mandatory roaming profiles, and astonishingly, they seem to work :) Sometimes, however, when we log in at one of the W2K machines it will complain that it cannot connect to the shares on the server, and starts up with a local default profile instead. If we log out and try again it works fine. The problem is not related to server or network load - it can happen when the network and server are idle but for the W2K login. Has anybody come across this? Any solutions, or clues for some tests to do? Now for the unpleasant bodge :) The only way we've been able to con2prt to work for setting up the default printer for the machine, is to add users to the group set up for domain admins (domain admin group in smb.conf). A similar problem arises with connecting to shares - we can't, unless the user is in the domain admin group. These problems occur within the context of the logon script. Anyone got any ideas? Cheers -- Phil Driscoll

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RE: [suse-linux-uk-schools] Costs of RM vs "other" options - advo cating a case for open source?
by Grainge, Derek 06 Mar '02

06 Mar '02

> Essentially - RM provide everything they seem to think they > want (though how much they know about what they want is an > open question, IYSWIM) and a single point of support. > Sorry, this is not an answer to your question, but a comment on RM et al. You will find a number of schools that swear by RM, and others who have used them and moved on. Reasons for RM: managed support for servers; you can pay for workstation installs; their standard install covers many of the things schools want. (office apps plus internet access and admin tools for example). If you don't have the technical skills in-house this is a very good way to go. (I had better add Viglen as well there, as it also provides similar services to the WIndows schools market) Reasons against RM: you have to do things the RM way, and if you want to do something different you could end up with an inflexible solution. Last time I looked at it, RM wasn't able to support the 100+ CDs we run across our network. They also tweak M$ networking in proprietary ways. Documented? Re your scare story: a long time ago we started with RM. We installed the cabling, they supplied the server and stations. In those days they were happy to sell Novell to schools. Within weeks it was obvious they'd screwed up the server installation, and they had simultaneously made a decision to restrict support to universities, and to stop selling it to schools. The concept of continuing to support what they had already sold eluded them: their Novell people were removed from the schools department. Therefore responses to support calls would take days as I was shuffled round the RM empire. I became pretty expert on Netware 2 and 3 installation as a result. The school also uses a Mentor database from Capita. I know we have logged at least one support call which has not been properly addressed in approx 2 months. The reason I mention this is not to whinge about the companies concerned (all right it was...), but to point out that when you buy a commercial service you cannot take support for granted. And why was this technician allowed to produce his complicated system without documenting it? That sounds like bad management. -- ******************************************************************************** All mail sent and received may be examined to prevent transmission of unacceptable material. Wellington College does not accept responsibility for email contents. Problems to postmaster(a)wellington-college.berks.sch.uk. Website: http://www.wellington-college.berks.sch.uk ********************************************************************************

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Costs of RM vs "other" options - advocating a case for open source?
by m.blackmore＠oxlug.org 06 Mar '02

06 Mar '02

I've been a bit of an open source advocate for some years, though can't claim much technical expertise in linux/xyzBSD. For me its an ideolological thing and also a small blow agains the corproate takeover of the world by the evil empire (USA armed with nukes and space borne weaponry to impose by force their financial scams of the WTO, general agreement on services which is even more evil than the WTO provisions etc. rant foam rave). But seriously, I've had a consistent response from teachers (I'm a governor at a Primary school) and it is to do with support and costs. Essentially - RM provide everything they seem to think they want (though how much they know about what they want is an open question, IYSWIM) and a single point of support. And they don't think it is going to disappear - there is a local horror story about a IT support tech at a Middle School (we run a 5-9, 11-14 and 15-18 first school, middle school, secondary school system here, though that is changing starting this year to conventional primary/secondary). who set up something complicated on a network, didn't quite do what it was supposed to, and then disappeared with no one to support it. I dunno if that was open source stuff or not... But it does provide a stimulus to conservatism, does that story. I haven't yet found out the costs of the RM support and provisions, nor whether it is an annual contract cost, or whatever. That seems to be very hard to come by - I suspect that it is quite pricey and a lot of it somewhat hidden costs. Anyway, what sort of bottom line provision can one get for proper support, software installed and working, ongoing support and maintenance, appropriate educational materials for the various key stages etc. and still remain out of the clutches of Microsoft? I'd like to shift our cost spend from paying for software to paying for the labour costs of value added services, which is the basis of the economics of open source anyway IMHO (and a more moral position too boot, but lets leave this out of the query for now!). Anyone got anything for me to start building a case upon? Hard figures please :-)

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tape backup (fwd)
by Roger Whittaker 05 Mar '02

05 Mar '02

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 12:11:06 +0000 From: Phil Driscoll <phil(a)dialsolutions.co.uk> To: suse-linux-uk-schools-owner(a)suse.com Subject: tape backup Now we have a working server, we need to back it up. Our plan is to copy the users data onto a hard disc on a second machine which will serve as a live backup if the main server fails. For more permanent backup we have a Sony DAT drive. Does anyone have useful experiences good or bad, or recommendations regarding backup software. Cheers -- Phil Driscoll

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redirection problems https://
by steven 05 Mar '02

05 Mar '02

Hi guys everything seems to be working fine except say Http://www.google.com is restricted using the google.com in the domains file https://www.google .com is let through how can i stop this. its letting through https:// secure websites thanks sparkz

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Apache
by Matt Johnson 05 Mar '02

05 Mar '02

I've installed SuSE 7.3, and just installed Apache. Erm...I've done this a few times with no problems, but I've obviously forgotten how to do it, since I get a 'could not connect to host' error upon typing 'localhost', or my ip, or my hostname. Grr. What have I done wrong? When I try to start Apache in the level editor in Yast2, I get a 'Apache returned 7'. What does that mean? The service has '???' next to it in the level editor, so I guess that's the fault. But what do I do? Thanks all. -- Matt __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Try FREE Yahoo! Mail - the world's greatest free email! http://mail.yahoo.com/

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Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] tape backup (fwd)
by Nial 05 Mar '02

05 Mar '02

It's buried deep in the FAQ. Version 7 (if and when it arrives) is supposed to sort the problem. IME it just asks for a new tape when it reaches the 4GB mark, regardless of the capacity of the media, All the best, Nial. At 14:03 05/03/2002 +0000, you wrote: >Is it? > >Never knew that. > >Did not play well with our onstream DI30 so maybe that was due to us >trying to fit more than 4G on it. > >Rob > >t 14:21 05/03/02 +0000, you wrote: > >>Taper is great, but it is limited to 4GB at present, which isn't enough >>in some situations, >> >> >>All the best, >>Nial. >> >>At 13:21 05/03/2002 +0000, you wrote: >>>Because I forwarded Phil's question, I now got this reply rather than the >>>list ... >>> >>>---------- Forwarded message ---------- >>>Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2002 12:42:58 +0000 >>>From: s-clarob(a)st-aidans.cumbria.sch.uk >>>To: Roger Whittaker <roger(a)suse.co.uk> >>>Subject: Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] tape backup (fwd) >>> >>>Yes >>> >>>taper works fine with scsi drives, >>> >>>Easy to use and not over the top like some backup solutuions. >>> >>>Robin Clayton >>> >>> >>>At 12:48 05/03/02 +0000, you wrote: >>> >>> >---------- Forwarded message ---------- >>> >Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 12:11:06 +0000 >>> >From: Phil Driscoll <phil(a)dialsolutions.co.uk> >>> >To: suse-linux-uk-schools-owner(a)suse.com >>> >Subject: tape backup >>> > >>> >Now we have a working server, we need to back it up. Our plan is to >>> copy the >>> >users data onto a hard disc on a second machine which will serve as a live >>> >backup if the main server fails. For more permanent backup we have a >>> Sony DAT >>> >drive. >>> > >>> >Does anyone have useful experiences good or bad, or recommendations >>> regarding >>> >backup software. >>> > >>> >Cheers >>> >-- >>> >Phil Driscoll >>> > >>> > >>> >-- >>> >To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-unsubscribe(a)suse.com >>> >For additional commands, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-help(a)suse.com >>> >>> >>> >>>-- >>>To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-unsubscribe(a)suse.com >>>For additional commands, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-help(a)suse.com >> >> >>-- >>To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-unsubscribe(a)suse.com >>For additional commands, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-help(a)suse.com > > >

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Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] tape backup (fwd)
by Roger Whittaker 05 Mar '02

05 Mar '02

Because I forwarded Phil's question, I now got this reply rather than the list ... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2002 12:42:58 +0000 From: s-clarob(a)st-aidans.cumbria.sch.uk To: Roger Whittaker <roger(a)suse.co.uk> Subject: Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] tape backup (fwd) Yes taper works fine with scsi drives, Easy to use and not over the top like some backup solutuions. Robin Clayton At 12:48 05/03/02 +0000, you wrote: >---------- Forwarded message ---------- >Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 12:11:06 +0000 >From: Phil Driscoll <phil(a)dialsolutions.co.uk> >To: suse-linux-uk-schools-owner(a)suse.com >Subject: tape backup > >Now we have a working server, we need to back it up. Our plan is to copy the >users data onto a hard disc on a second machine which will serve as a live >backup if the main server fails. For more permanent backup we have a Sony DAT >drive. > >Does anyone have useful experiences good or bad, or recommendations regarding >backup software. > >Cheers >-- >Phil Driscoll > > >-- >To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-unsubscribe(a)suse.com >For additional commands, e-mail: suse-linux-uk-schools-help(a)suse.com

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