[Gllug] EDUCASHUN NEWS

[Xander D Harkness]

Alain Williams wrote:

>On Thu, Jun 12, 2003 at 08:21:33AM +0100, Gordon Joly wrote:
>  
>
>>******
>>
>>EDUCASHUN NEWS (Private Eye 1082, 13-26 June 2003)
>>
>>MICROSOFT's annual renewable licences continue to drain cash from the
>>UK's education system, where the company enjoys a virtual monopoly
>>(Eye 1062).
>>...
>>    
>>
>
>The other big drain on schools is the virtual RM monopoly. I am working on my kids'
>school to break that - and have lost the first round due to FUD, the head was
>quite understanding/receptive when I talked about it ...
>
>A few nice stories/examples of schools that have moved away and lived would be good.
>I am (initially) trying to get PCs bought on the open market into the school
>as a preliminary to getting some Linux boxes in.
>
I was involved in moving a school away from RM about six years ago.  RMs 
anual fees are extortionate.

The hardware was a nightmare, the NICs had bios' that checked the main 
server for RM software and then checked the local harddrive for RM 
software.  If either was a problem motherboard would not boot.  The bios 
on the motherboard had been tampered to tie in with the NIC and a boot 
partition on the hard drive.

I would not even consider them computers, just RM appliances.  One of 
the teachers spoke to RM on the phone and was told that they make their 
systems as hard as possible to migrate away from.

The school had no install media for the programs they had purchased from 
RM, only copies on the server.

The IT 'teacher'  was someone who knew how to use a spreadsheet and 
diligently changed the backup tape daily.  The backups were so large 
that they required two tapes.  She never checked the error messages and 
there were no effective backups of the system.

RM had set the NT4 server to run RAID0 and the whole job went tits up 
when one hard drive died (see earlier thread :-).  Everything 
disappeared, timetables, student work, all software.....

The team I was working with to convert the workstations was blamed as we 
were present when the server died.  I guess she never told the Head that 
she had not backed the system up.

It is a very tough job to move RM out, mostly because the systems are so 
inter-dependant.  Other schools I have seen the RM networks have been 
very flaky.

I do some work at a couple of schools, one runs NT4/W2K,Linux servers 
and w98/XP desktops and the other is Linux only servers.  The latter is 
seeking to put some Linux desktops in.  Both these are private schools 
that have a sensible budget. 

One has implemented wireless throughout and many pupils have laptops.  
Kazaa has been a big problem for them as it will use any port from 25, 
80 and any other it will find.  Of course it is P2P and it does not work 
blocking a couple of servers.  I managed to kill it and implement a 
transparent squid proxy that does not support kazaa.  I was told by the 
chap there that most of the schools using the Local Authorities 
recommended set up (which I rejected) are being flooded with 
inappropriate downloads.

The big thing was the fact that they do not have to reboot these servers 
and they are shocked by this.

Enough waffling, I hate RM, they follow MS very closely with their 
'lock-in'.

I really hope it works out - there is always more help here.

Kind regards
Xander


>
>One problem is the 'integration' one. One big RM FUD is that other boxes won't
>work with their 'client connect' s/ware (authentication & simple admin).
>I did hear a story of this 'failing' if the network card was not an RM bought one.
>
>Does anyone know of a Linux client implementation ? (Server comes next).
>If not this would seem ripe for a bit of reverse engineering.
>
>  
>



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