-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Thursday 31 Jan 2002 16:58 pm, Chris Howells wrote:
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?
Sounds like it could be a good idea :-) For those of us who aren't clued up on RM stuff, though, could you explain what RM Connect does?
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 :)
I'd like to help (well, after finals; so I'll be available in about 5 weeks time).
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).
Would it be difficult to make the interface like RM Connect, so it'd be easy to pick up for people used to it? And, presumably, RM Connect would have some sort of support with it, supplied by RM? I think that it would be important to have some sort of support system in place, otherwise schools (I presume) wouldn't really look into it. Also, universities are more likely to have Novell, or some sort of Unix system, rather than RM (in college here, we've got Netware 5, soon to be upgraded to Netware 6). Schools are going to be the most likely target audience.
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.
You could use a static DHCP system - then you wouldn't need to enter the hostname, and the server will give the same IP address to that particular workstation all the time. (Assuming you're talking about workstation; you could supply a separate floppy disk & CD for the server). Presumably with the workstation, you could just install the system via FTP/HTTP from the main server? (i.e. having a copy of the distribution CDs copied onto the server hard drive)
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.
You could use any distribution, and use GNU cfengine to make custom changes on a per-machine basis. It's very powerful software, and you can undoubtedly do what you want with it.
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.
- From a programming perspective, completely differently. From an end-user perspective, fairly similar :-)
Stuff like Kylix and Open Office will also be provided.
Be careful: you may find it difficult to distribute Kylix because it's non-Free software. You'd have to get permission from Borland. KDevelop is supposed to be nice for C/C++ QT apps, although I've never used it. And provide WINE - if it's in a school setting, they'll undoubtedly have some software that requires Windows (like ecctis).
On the server side, CUPS would be used for the printing system and all machines will have ext3 formatted hard discs.
Sounds reasonable, although ReiserFS is more mature ;-) (start filesystem flamewars here. And end here ;-)
* 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
Sounds like a job for cfengine. I don't really know enough about cfengine to be able to write configuration files (although I could poke around and give it a go, if you're really serious about this project). Print and Disk quotas you'd have to manage on the server-end, not with cfengine (which is used to push information out to clients).
* 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.
<pedant> You don't download via apache, you download via a web browser or wget </pedant>. This shouldn't be too difficult to do - set of shell scripts should suffice.
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.
Possibly. Or cfengine :-) Rsync may be a better option than CVS.
* A database such as NIS would probably be used for the administrative database
NIS is only used for sharing passwords. For the purposes described above, a simple MySQL database (or even some LDAP system, for people who like buzzwords) would probably be better.
* 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.
Or simply have /home NFS mounted automatically at boot time, rather than at login time.
* 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.
Webmin, possibly, may be useful?
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.
Fairly easily done. Same way as doing any other files :)
A web based e-mail system could be used to integrate with the IMAP mail server.
Again, lots of possibilities - check Freshmeat.
* The server side would consist of the following pieces of software: - Samba - Apache - Squid - IMAP e-mail server
NFS, NIS?
* 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
Fair enough.
KDE's architecture makes it very easy to provide configuration files based on this process
Sounds like it - if you're a KDE developer, then you'd know far more about it than I do :) Dan - -- dankolb@ox.compsoc.net - --I reserve the right to be completely wrong about any comments or opinions expressed; don't trust everything you read above-- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 6.5.8 iQA/AwUBPFmKpZdDUnce+EgsEQIbawCfVNRZKprsae72ytS4S4sz4ndwDFcAoMxN e4wz7TX2cZseSnmOJm5btkbE =e+Qx -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----