- <div class="tags">
-
-
-
- Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/bootsystem">bootsystem</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
-
- </div>
- </div>
- <div class="padding"></div>
-
- <div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_missing_in_the_Debian_desktop__or_why_my_parents_use_Kubuntu.html">What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu</a></div>
- <div class="date">2011-07-29 08:10</div>
- <div class="body">
-<p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
-mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
-desktop to be useful for more people. The use case for this is my
-parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
-issues.</p>
-
-<p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
-implement. After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
-do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>
-
-<ol>
-
-<li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
-are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
-indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
-tool to handle it. I have no problem guiding both of my parents
-through the process over the phone. If a kernel reboot is required,
-this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool. Last
-time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
-Debian.</li>
-
-<li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
-plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
-currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
-should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
-and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
-advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
-Packages file in the APT archive). If one or more packages are found,
-it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
-type. If the package require the user to accept some non-free
-license, this is explained to the user. The entire process make it
-more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
-make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
-not the browser for any missing features.</li>
-
-<li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
-handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
-it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
-should search for a package that would add support for it. This
-happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264. The selection
-and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
-plugin handling. This is as far as I know implemented using a
-gstreamer hook. The end result is that the user easily get access to
-the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
-explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>
-
-<li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
-displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
-start emacs to show it. If I remember correctly, when doing the same
-in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser. At least I
-know Opera will show text files within the browser. I much prefer the
-latter behaviour.</li>
-
-</ol>
-
-<p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
-upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
-it do not matter much.</p>
-
-<p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
-Debian release. It would require the coordinated effort of several
-maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/norsk">norsk</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Setting_up_a_new_school_with_Debian_Edu_Squeeze.html">Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze</a></div>
+ <div class="date">25th January 2012</div>
+ <div class="body"><p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
+/ Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
+<tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
+the computers in a school without much manual labour. Here is a short
+summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
+
+<p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
+central server in the network. Next, PXE boot all the client machines
+as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
+allow the clients to report their existence to the central server. When
+this is done, log on to the central server and run
+<tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
+collected information to generate system objects in LDAP. The output
+will look similar to this:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+% sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
+info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
+info: Create GOsa machine for auto-mac-00-01-02-03-04-06 [10.0.16.20] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:06.
+
+Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
+
+Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
+enter password: *******
+%
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
+root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
+populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
+automatically generated names. The final step to set up the school is
+then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
+the web based user, group and system administration system to change
+system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
+enable DHCP and DNS for the systems. All clients that should be used
+as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
+group. After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
+and get their assigned names and group based configuration
+automatically.</p>
+
+<p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
+enabled this weekend. You might want to give it a try.</p>
+
+<p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
+hosts, one need to add the option -a. I forgot to mention this in my
+original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>