Re: [Sheflug] school project

[Alex Hudson <xxxxx [at] xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Fred,

On Mon, 2001-12-10 at 13:55, fred wrote:
> Can anyone help me with documentation, of this type of project.

The O'Reilly Samba book is free for download - Richard will probably be
able to point out where. It's very good, I'd start there. 

> How do you create student accounts from a MIS data base system

What format is the database in? It would be possible to knock up a perl
script or something to automatically add users to the samba users file.

> What tools can be use for multiple copy of home accounts: I use
> linuxconf /networking/user accounts but find this slow in many ways.

It depends how you set them up. I don't know of many tools which enable
you to manipulate large numbers of user accounts in a sensible way, but
you can certainly generate and destroy accounts quite easily using
automatic scripts - see above answer re: databases.

> Any ideas on setting up user location within the home directory

If you mean a Windows roaming profile, Samba will do that automatically
if you ask it to. Have a look at SWAT for Samba administration - you
might find that useful.

> The school in question has no connection to the internet, I intend to
> set up DHCP server as well as Apache for local intranet.

Sensible ;)

> Should I use a private IP address such as 192.168.1.0 for the network.

Yes, but make sure that you leave enough room for expansion. You may
already have more than 250-odd terminals on your network already, I
don't know how big your school is. Also, if you want fail-over DHCP
you'll need to allocate two DHCP pools - I often find it easiest to
allocate a class-C size subnet to each DHCP server, and have a classless
/20 or something as the network as a whole. But, if you're running DHCP
you can change very easily - don't be scared of making mistakes at this
point! I'm assuming the number of servers you'll be deploying is quite
low, so if you need to change the network settings it'll be very easy
with DHCP.

> What problems have your self encountered installing for a school.

Never done it ;)

> I intend to install some linux computers with old hardware that they may
> have, smoothwall or Mandrake Linux /firewall as well as some work
> stations.

I would personally go with Mandrake firewall - I don't rate Smoothwall,
or the support you get for it.

Cheers,

Alex.



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