[Computerbank] Re: [cai-sa] Teen Challenge -Network

[Romana Challans]

Thanks Pete for your report, its a beaut:)

Re Hardware, the new structure reassigns Hardware to various 
people.....but we still need people on board for procurement & storage etc..

(the restructure diagram was there, went missing, is now back - makes 
the restructure make much more sense:)  )

Could pepole look at the diagram, and the list of people and roles 
below, and fill in the gaps asap???? I'll update the web site as people 
work it out:)

I seem to have BIG shed for hardware storage - and Marion seems a lot 
easier for peopel to get things to - so maybe we could transport some of 
that stuff down Pete? (I know, I just offloaded it to you, but I dont 
mind if its not inside the house anymore ;)))  )


r:)


Peter Gossner wrote:
> Hi all,
> This is a Report on Hardware (as I am aware of it) Timor and Teen
> Challenge.
> But first...
> Welcome aboard one Mr James Dean... It's great to have you with us and
> even better that you are down near the airport :)
> (I will try to get some gear to you this week)
> 
> I have been quiet lately, but some stuff continues to happen...
> Heres is a quick report on Hardware ..
> My back room is chokkers with a variety of gear 90 % of which is useful.
> I have started resorting it out...>>>>
> My back shed has a growing pile of less useful equipment (486s etc)..
> 
> Gear out:
> TeenChallenge (Murray Bridge branch)...
> Teen Challenge recieved 2 NEC monitors , a few NICs (PCI)
> Half dozen serial mice
> and more importantly some support in the shape of Robyn Manning, David
> Loyd and um me 
> to set up a Mandrake based network at their office in Murray bridge.
> It was an interesting day / night / early morning and was all up
> succesfull.
> (except for Robyns Car which I hope is now fixed ...)
> 
> The main problems we had were with CDROM (players) which proved to be
> very frustrating.
> (much switching of IDE ribbons and units about).
> Gear In:
> Kylie swapped / donated a heap of ISA NICs which I have yet to go
> through but will be usefull for smaller networks where there is the time
> to config each box individually and of course home networks. I also
> snaffled various bits and pieces to add to the choas that is my back
> room.
> 
> FWIW: (some OBs)
> Mandrake has a nice installer which is generic / friendly  enough for
> most cases but has some real resource requirements .
> 
> Mandrake has some (to a Debianite at least) quirks in some configs that
> I best leave to Mandrake people to explain,( best to use DrakeConf or
> whatever the thing is called) ..
> Both the Installer and desktop (KDE 3) are really slow on low RAM (<
> 64meg) boxen , does cheap  partitioning and strange things with groups /
> root that I didn't have the time to really investigate on site.
> I am not sure why it ignores /etc/hostname either but functionally that
> seemed to make no difference. 
> It would be great for 128meg boxes. 
> To my mind performance is way too slow even at 64meg (It's a shame but 
> KDE 3 / QT3 is  still doing its usual ram suck).
> Boot time is , well , um a chance to grab a coffee.. (but as you only do
> this once It's not really that big an issue).
> The kernel was 2.4.19 (something) and had all the usual set of default
> modules.
> The CDROM issue was sometimes due to old/broken gear and sometimes and
> was complicated by some install CD's using the more modern
> (lighter/faster) burns. Perhaps we should burn all boot cd's at least
> with a slow setting and with eltorito formatiing ..????
> i.e. assume to worst case.
> 
> As an "office/ MS replacement" it probably rocks and of course that call
> is one that the end users should make.
> I would feel comfortable offering the default Mandrake to our end users
> as long as they could see it next to a proper Unix and probably without
> any "desktop environment" or at least Gnome 2 as a somewhat faster
> alternative. I guess Mandrake will offer Gnome2 with their next release.
>  (and yes I know that can be confusing).
> 
> I hope to meet with Tony and James on Tuesday (or sometime this week)
> and bring some more equipment into their hands.
> 
> Timor:
> Believe it or not the War has had a bit of an effect with the Darwin
> people on this project .. I have had a full set of shots in case I have
> to go as well... (I think I have had a total of 8 injections and some
> Salk (polio) vacc. .. lost count).. The various bits of me have stopped
> hurting :)
> The short status is all we need is Transport and that has been close 3
> times now... We will also have some English speaking (Au) support on
> site as well. (well a little) Until September AND there is an attempt
> being made to get AUSAID funding for a feasibility / scoping study for a
> real/ on going project sort of a train the trainers thing.  I will do a
> full report when I have firmer details.. (this is one of the things that
> is being held up for a bit by the Iraq situation)..
> 
> Hardware install wise I have put it away for a bit and am going to
> package everything up over the next couple of weeks (i will update boxes
> just before they go).
> 
> Finally I would like to welcome the new structure and wish everybody all
> the best with it. 
> There is some info here: 
> http://sa.computerbank.org.au/minutes/23march2003.html
> (in case ya missed it)
> As a few of you are aware I have problems getting about (transport) and,
> like the rest of us, limited time to throw at the organisation. As I
> live in Woodside my utility as a Hardware co-odinator is limited as so I
> am hoping some other fool will take up this role....
> David Loyd is Tech Cordinator and has some great ideas that I will leave
> himself to share with you.
> (just a nudge DSL :)
>  I intend staying active I am hoping we can get more boxes out, and that
> is going to need more than just me playing with the hardware.. 
> Oh that means I officially quit as Official  Hardware /idiot/guru  ....
> Will somebody else please take up this role , and perhaps the admin
> people could knock up a "job description" - brief -scope or something.
> 
> Pete..
> NUOHC-CAiSA
> 


-- 
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Romana Challans
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State Coordinator
Computerbank Australia Incorporated - Sa Branch
http://sa.computerbank.org.au/
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