Re: [school-discuss] Mac Linux network install failure

[Les Richardson <richl@mail.tfsd.sk.ca>]

These kind of things point out the fact that 3 things are required:
a) Hardware
b) Software
c) People trained to use them.

Like a three legged stool, the lack of any one and the whole thing falls
over. 

The hardware is now easy. Almost anything can function as an X terminal.

The software we're working on, although documentation would probably fall
into the gray zone.

What about the training... now that is the hard part. What about the Unix
philosophy? What about free software and GPL? These are the foundation
stones on which things are built.

But of course, we already knew that. The problem in these
Installations-Gone-Wrong was that the background and understanding of
issues wasn't there. (and really can't be).

But who can we educate about these things?..... Let's talk to students.

Les




On Thu, 10 Oct 2002, Jim Thomas wrote:

> Doug Loss wrote:
> [sad story snipped]
> > I just thought you might be interested in hearing about an
> > installation that went wrong for political reasons.  
> 
> I can share another.  I've got Linux pretty well established at my kids'
> school where I volunteer as a sysadmin.  I have five servers set up,
> including one K12LTSP server (which is down right now due to a lighting
> strike).  As soon as I get it back online, our 18-client LTSP lab will
> be back in business.
> 
> At the beginning of the school year a new parent donated four PC's to
> the school for the Kindergarten class.  They did not come with an OS.  I
> talked to the Kindergarten teacher about setting up another LTSP, and
> she agreed that she'd try it.  But as it turned out, the beginning of
> the school year is a really bad time to embark on a new setup like
> that.  I was already buried in other network-related tasks (we had just
> changed ISP's, and I was still tweaking the LTSP setup in the PC lab and
> migrating our web pages and email accounts to a new server, etc).  
> 
> When the donor (a Windows guy) got wind that it was going to be a few
> weeks before I could get to setting up the boxes he had donated, he took
> it upon himself to shell out some bucks (and a lot of 'em I guess) for 4
> copies of Win98.  
> 
> That money would have been better spent on some new monitors, but what
> can I say about it now?  Since he donated the PC's and bought the OS's,
> he is now responsible for the kindergarten room.  
> 
> Luckily, my existing deployments have not been affected.
> 
> I guess the lesson we can draw from these stories (Doug's and mine) is
> this - when you get a green light, put the pedal to the metal.  If you
> can.
>  
> -- 
> Jim Thomas            Principal Applications Engineer  Bittware, Inc
> jthomas@bittware.com  http://www.bittware.com          (703) 779-7770
> The sooner you get behind, the more time you'll have to catch up
>