[plug] Job opportunities? (OT) + linux school servers...

[Thomas, Andre]

Hi,

On the topic of Linux stuff in Perth, is there any formal Linux courses
available (similar to the Sun courses) here?  The only ones I have come
accross are in the east so far.

Cheers,
-André

 
> I once proposed the idea of moving our school servers which 
> are currently
> a mix of G3 Macs and NT boxes over to Linux servers which would handle
> both Macs and PC's and allow students to share files in 
> between. One of
> the reasons the idea was turned down was due to the lack of 
> technicians
> that could support it, in the case that the only linux 
> proficient people
> at the school left (very inevitable case).  
> 
> If I could show that there is a fair base of technicians in 
> Perth that can
> support our Linux server, then my case to the school shall 
> get a rebirth
> :)
> 
> Wouldn't a Linux support company in Perth be a profitable business to
> start? Or has this already been done?
> 
> <going more ot now...>
> 
> Also, could anybody perhaps suggest anything to the following 
> plan below,
> to make things even more convenient/integrated/better? Or has 
> anybody had
> any experience with setting up student servers or similar in 
> the education
> environment? If so, I would be very keen to get in touch with you.
> 
> Our school was originally planning to implement a student 
> server to serve
> the Macintosh and Windows machines at our school with 
> personalised student
> files, roaming profiles, etc. The plan was to use Novell's 
> NDS system on
> NT4 which was chosen because of it's flexibility to provide to both
> Macintosh and Windows clients, to allow restrictions to 
> logins by time and
> location (IP address), amongst probably a multitude of other 
> things, for
> the few thousand dollars NDS costs.
> 
> My alternative solution was to use Linux, for web server, 
> mail servers and
> proxy servers, all eventually, but to firstly get a student 
> file server
> set up. We have Macintosh labs (OS 8.5/8.6) and PC labs (W98) that
> students currently use. From the Macintoshes, a student would 
> simply load
> their volume from the Linux student server in Chooser, running
> atalkd/afpd. On the W98 machines, they would actually log in,
> authenticating with the samba server and pulling off their roaming
> profiles, and load their logon scripts to mount their home directory.
> 
> What would also be nice is to have student's indiviudal Netscape
> preferences to access mail on an IMAP box, leaving none of 
> their own mail
> on the machine itself.
> 
> PAM would be implemented to enforce the login restrictions by time and
> location, possibly using the pam_group (?) module or using an 
> LDAP server
> and interfacing with the pam_ldap module. I haven't quite got this
> working yet on my 'test bed'. I'd prefer to use LDAP, yet the 
> HOWTO seems
> pretty brief. Is there a more comprehensive guide to LDAP that anybody
> could recommend?
> 
> And the entire solution would be basically free (besides setting
> up/maintenance costs) and probably a fair bit more stable 
> than the current
> system. Can anybody please comment any suggestions or their own
> experiences?
> 
> Sorry for all the ramble....
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Bernard.
> 
> -- 
>  Bernard Blackham
>  dagobah at mad.scientist.com
> 
> 
>