blog/draft/2012-03-skolelinux-wheezy.txt

   1 Title: Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions
   2 Tags: english, debian edu
   3 Date: 2012-06-11 14:30
   4
   5 <p>During my work on Debian Edu based on Squeeze, I came across some
   6 issues that should be addressed in the Wheezy release.  I finally
   7 found time to wrap up my notes and provide quick summary of what I
   8 found, with a bit explanation.</p>
   9
  10 <p><ul>
  11
  12 <li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
  13 changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
  14 with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
  15 system depend on tasksel tasks in
  16 /usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
  17 installation.</li>
  18
  19 <li>Enable Kerberos login for more services.  Now with the Kerberos
  20 foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
  21 services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions.  We should
  22 at least try to enable it for these services:
  23 <ul>
  24
  25   <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
  26     quotas.</li>
  27   <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
  28   <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
  29   <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
  30   <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
  31   <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
  32
  33 </ul></li>
  34
  35 <li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
  36 authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
  37 use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
  38 is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
  39
  40 <li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install.  The split made
  41 sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
  42 inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
  43
  44 <li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
  45 touching the disk if the disk is too small.  This is
  46 <ahref="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
  47 d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
  48 it and upload.</li>
  49
  50 <li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
  51 time config).  LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
  52 packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
  53 in Wheezy.
  54
  55 <li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
  56 the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
  57 up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
  58
  59 <li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
  60 change on first login.  This is useful when handing out password on
  61 paper, to make sure only the user know the password.  This require
  62 fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
  63
  64 <li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
  65 The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
  66 familiar with GUIs.  This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
  67 have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
  68
  69 <li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
  70 actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses).  None of the
  71 nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
  72
  73 <li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
  74 using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
  75 packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
  76
  77 <li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
  78 when changing password using the Kerberos protocol.  The hook was
  79 requested in <ahref="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
  80 #588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy.  We might need to write a
  81 MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
  82
  83 <li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
  84 <ul>
  85
  86 <li>reduce the number of chemistry visualizers</li>
  87 <li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
  88 <li>and probably more?</li>
  89 <ul></li>
  90
  91 <li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly.  This is
  92 mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
  93 examples too.  For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
  94 firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
  95 some GUI to do this.  Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
  96 could consider using their packages.  At the moment we have some
  97 command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
  98 for the LTSP chroot).</li>
  99
 100
 101 <li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options.  We
 102 should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
 103 install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
 104 use.</li>
 105
 106 <li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
 107 interesting educational packages.  We should work on the package
 108 tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
 109 packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
 110 new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
 111
 112 <li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
 113 with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
 114 be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
 115 filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled.  We should
 116 implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
 117 instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
 118
 119 <li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
 120 "take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
 121 There are at least three implementations, <ahref="">italc</a>,
 122 <ahref="">controlaula</a> og <ahref="">epoptes</a> and we should pick
 123 one of them and make it trivial to set it up in a school.  The
 124 challenges is how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers
 125 in one room and how to set up which machine/user can control the
 126 machines in a given room.</li>
 127
 128 <li>Tables and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
 129 should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
 130 the Debian Edu network.  Not quite sure how.  Perhaps we should
 131 provide a installation profile for them, or add some sync services to
 132 allow them to exchange configuration and data with the central
 133 server.</li>
 134
 135 </li>
 136
 137 <p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
 138 version.</p>