blog/data/2012-01-25-skolelinux.txt

   1 Title: Setting up a new school with Debian Edu/Squeeze
   2 Tags: english, debian edu, sitesummary
   3 Date: 2012-01-25 21:00
   4
   5 <p>The next version of <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu
   6 / Skolelinux</a> will include a new tool
   7 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp</tt>, which can be used to quickly set up all
   8 the computers in a school without much manual labour.  Here is a short
   9 summary on how to use it to set up a new school.</p>
  10
  11 <p>First, install a combined Main Server and Thin Client Server as the
  12 central server in the network.  Next, PXE boot all the client machines
  13 as thin clients and wait 5 minutes after the last client booted to
  14 allow the clients to report their existence to the central server.  When
  15 this is done, log on to the central server and run
  16 <tt>sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a</tt> in the <tt>konsole</tt> to use the
  17 collected information to generate system objects in LDAP.  The output
  18 will look similar to this:</p>
  19
  20 <p><blockquote><pre>
  21 % sitesummary2ldapdhcp -a
  22 info: Updating machine tjener.intern [10.0.2.2] id ether-00:01:02:03:04:05.
  23 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.
  24
  25 Enter password if you want to activate these changes, and ^c to abort.
  26
  27 Connecting to LDAP as cn=admin,ou=ldap-access,dc=skole,dc=skolelinux,dc=no
  28 enter password: *******
  29 %
  30 </pre></blockquote></p>
  31
  32 <p>After providing the LDAP administrative password (the same as the
  33 root password set during installation), the LDAP database will be
  34 populated with system objects for each PXE booted machine with
  35 automatically generated names.  The final step to set up the school is
  36 then to log into <a href="https://oss.gonicus.de/labs/gosa/">GOsa</a>,
  37 the web based user, group and system administration system to change
  38 system names, add systems to the correct host groups and finally
  39 enable DHCP and DNS for the systems.  All clients that should be used
  40 as diskless workstations should be added to the workstation-hosts
  41 group.  After this is done, all computers can be booted again via PXE
  42 and get their assigned names and group based configuration
  43 automatically.</p>
  44
  45 <p>We plan to release beta3 with the updated version of this feature
  46 enabled this weekend.  You might want to give it a try.</p>
  47
  48 <p>Update 2012-01-28: When calling sitesummary2ldapdhcp to add new
  49 hosts, one need to add the option -a.  I forgot to mention this in my
  50 original text, and have added it to the text now.</p>