[Lancaster] Re: Lancaster LUG

[Martyn Welch]

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Hi Ken,

- ----- Original Message ----------
On Saturday 01 May 2004 19:06, Ken Hough wrote:

> Martyn,
>
> I've just re-read my message concerning Debian and SuSE.
> Perhaps it appears a wee bit agressive. It wasn't intended to be. I'm
> just not a great diplomat.
>

Don't worry, neither am I. I also fail to see why Diplomacy should get in the 
way of a technical debate :o)

> If you wish to install Debian on the PCs at the Folly, I won't be
> offended. Using SuSE has allowed me to get them up, running and proved.
> On the other hand, if you don't have the time, they will be set up with
> networking cards and X servers, ready to run remote X.
>

As I said in my last post, anything working is a plus. I think the hope was to 
be running debian at some point, however having a different working distro on 
there, which does hardware detection, should allow us to migrate a lot easier 
in the future. My personal feeling is just to get them working, we need 
working machines not bricks.

> I've got the last box up and running (Pentium 200/96MB RAM in a server
> box). The ISA network card is running, but I need to find another PCI
> graphics card. Existing one is probably faulty. It needs to be a short
> one to avoid fouling the CPU fan -- poor design.
>
> I intend to get down to the Folly one day this week (will check with
> Taylor) and get all the boxes together and tidied up.
>
> Can you clarify a couple of points:
>
> 1. I'm intending to set all PCs up for 800 x 600 pixels. Is this OK?
>

Could you try 1024 x 768 ? These boxes may be used for graphics (i.e. the 
gimp). If it doesn't work, or looks far to compact on the available monitors 
800 x 600 is fine. I'll stand behind your judgement.

> 2. Are they to use DHCP or static IP addresses? If static, what range?
>

I was hoping we would find time to sort out the server and get DHCP working, 
possibly with Dynamic DNS. Last time I spoke to Taylor he expressed an 
interest in having 3-4 machines on and working. If we can configure all the 
boxes identically as possible, at least from a network point of view, then if 
one of the used machines fail it can hopefully be a straight swap out + email 
to say one of the machines is down.

> 3. How many terminals are planned? Are any to be set up as servers or
> other duties? If so, what?
>

My vision was of 4-5 machines running soully as terminals (some spare stored 
for swapping out machines), these would be the tiny boxes as they all look 
near identical.

The main X server will hopefully move up into the office, keeping it safe from 
hands.

It would be nice to have a machine set up for DHCP rather than using static 
addresses (less manual configuration to worry about), possibly a machine with 
a mirror of the used distro to aid upgrading of machines (NFS/ftp?) could 
also allow us to store mirrors of he disks on a server. This could be done on 
the X server so that the infrastructure is out of the way upstairs...

Then there is all ways the possibility of a development server or something. 

> See you sometime
>
> Ken Hough

Likewise,

Martyn

- -- 
Martyn Welch (welchm at comp.lancs.ac.uk)

PGP Key : http://ubicomp.lancs.ac.uk/~martyn/pgpkey.html
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