[Gllug] Request for Help with Community Project - Installing and Supporting Edubuntu (Linux) in Youth Centre

[John Hearns]

On Tue, 2006-04-25 at 20:05 +0100, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 25, 2006 at 02:22:17PM +0000, Alex McMahon wrote:
> > 
> > I am working as part of a group who are setting up an 'internet room' 
> > in Putney Vale Youth Centre (London). We have 5 computers which we will 
> > be installing Edubuntu onto. However we are concerned that without a 
> > small amount of ongoing support the computers will gradually become 
> > outdated, degrade or stop working. 
> 
> Or get rooted, or exploited by the local users. Whatever solution you
> go for, I'd recommend ensuring you have a failsafe 'kickstart' ability
> to do equiv of a bare-metal install at any time. A box running a combo
> of DHCP/PXE/Apache would be able to serve as a network boot & install
> server, reducing the task of re-install to simply reboot & hold down
> F12 for network boot. 
That's very good advice.


I looked at Edubuntu recently, and it comes enabled to be an LTSP
server.
To explain to Alex, Linux Terminal Server Project enables client PCs to
act as thin clients using a central server.
So an alternate plan would be to use the most powerful PC as a server,
and don't allow users to access this. Lock it away in a cupboard.
The other 4 PCs will boot up as clients - you can switch them on and
off, and they won't be exploited by local users, as Dan says.

Have a look at the first two sections of:
https://wiki.edubuntu.org/ThinClientHowto
And don't let discussions of PXE and TFTP warp your brain.




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