The state of Maine, it looks like, is going to be implimenting networks
in all schools. A minimum of 1 machine for every 2 students in the
classroom.
There are a few problems with the way they are doing this:
1) It looks like they will be using Citrix and NT. This means totally
stupid boxes on the desktop
2) Huge initial server cost and crowded network.
3) It isn't linux (of course). Nor does it allow for tons of nifty
things such as blocking certain students at various times from different
programs and net access (the latter can be done easy with linux, not
sure about the former).
I am trying to create a document to petition Maine to use linux based
stations. I would like this to have disks but be totally server
reliant. The idea is to netboot and use coda as the file system (to
increase speed and overcome short periods of network downtime).
I am wondering how you can create, including using initial ramdisks if
needed, a kernel that will boot the system using coda. Remember the
systems should be identical as possible and easy to update the kernel
and things as possible. So, using a ramdisk that doesnt have enough info
isnt good enough, but if it could start with a few files in a /tmp/bin
/tmp/sbin, etc and first thing do the coda mount, that would work.
Else, how would one go about using NFS as LITTLE as possible (just the
booting process)? Is there also a way to force coda to do a sync, say
on shutdown or student logout (so their edited files get flushed back to
the server)?
Sorry for the partially on topic/partially off topic nature of this
message. I just would hate to see Maine fry themselves when they can
get better low cost administration with linux than they can with
Critrix/winframe/NT.
Trever
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jan 23 2000 - 21:00:20 EST