[Lias] Thanks for help re Proxy

[Les Bell]

"Trevor Gunter" <tgunter at lisp.com.au> wrote:

>>
I know that's a poor excuse and I appreciate all of you not treating those
teachers on this list who have varying levels of Linux skills (usually low)
as newbies. However, I find that a lot of what people recommend for me to
do, I will try and often bumble through, but what some have suggested I
have
little idea of what it means or even how to do it. I know this comes in the
category of RTFM and I do try, but there are just so many hours in the day
and we are teachers first trying to integrate Linux into schools in varying
ways.
<<

It's the same for everyone, Trevor, even those of us who've been doing this
for years. I spent a couple of hours this afternoon screwing around trying
to fix a Samba/WinNT printer problem. I guess one answer is something that
we started years ago on the caldera-users list (back when Caldera were a
reasonable company with a nice distro): someone collated the replies on the
list and produced a "Step By Step" ("SxS") web site that gave detailed
instructions on how to set various things up.

Perhaps something similar would help here. I know that I face the same
problem from the other side - I set up a Squid proxy for my kids' school,
and sooner or later will have to hand over responsibility for it to someone
else. Before that happens, I suspect I'll have to train them, as well as
completely documenting the setup.

Now I've made another rod for my own back, by proposing that the school set
out to get some return on its $25,000 investment in LAN cabling by
installing an intranet server. I threw together a prototype, running under
VMWare on my laptop, brainstormed what it should do (mind map at
http://ffps.lesbell.com.au/pandc/schoolserver/index.html) and have now sold
the school on the idea, with implementation planned for next term.

This thing involves configuration of Apache, Samba, some CGI programs,
Webmin and Usermin, procmail, and a bunch of other stuff. I've decided to
document it in detail, in the SxS style, as otherwise the moment I try to
hand it over to someone else, it will start to fall apart. I'll write up
some articles and post them on my site initially, and if anyone finds them
useful, terrific. To be honest, I think whoever takes it over will need
support from a community around Lias, and if I can encourage others to
implement similar systems, that will be great.

With that in mind, I'll let this list know when I start posting articles. I
also expect to spend a day or two setting installing and configuring the
server, and if anyone in the Sydney area wants to lend a hand and see how
it all goes together, they're welcome to come around and take notes.

Best,

--- Les Bell, CISSP
[http://www.lesbell.com.au]