Hello Chase,<br><br>This all sounds great. We have some backup scripts currently, but I bet even there we could use some help in improving them; and we could definitely use good administrative interfaces for these kinds of simple daily diagnoses.
<br><br>Some related issues, each of which have partial solutions but could use unified simple interfaces:<br> - monitoring what machines are on the network -- which students and machines are close to a server, and how to add new ones to the set that are recognized
<br> - maintaining a list of systems, parts, repair parts, and issues related to each... since you might diagnose a broken antenna but not be able to fix it for a little while, and two different people might make the original diagnosis and be on hand to fix it later.
<br><br>Since you have some specific ideas you mention below, you might want to sign up to have a project for your software suite hosted on our development server:<br> <a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Project_hosting">
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Project_hosting</a><br><br>--SJ<br><br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 4/24/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Chase</b> <<a href="mailto:cdp2055@cis.rit.edu">cdp2055@cis.rit.edu</a>> wrote:
</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><br>--<br>Chase Putnam<br>Student Systems Administrator<br><br><br>OLPC Project Staff and Community:
<br><br>My name is Chase Putnam. I am an Information Technology student at the<br>Rochester Institute of Technology. I have been keeping up with the<br>development of the OLPC project and believe it to be of great benefit to
<br>the many countries who decide to embrace its functionality to expand<br>their educational institutions.<br><br>A group of fellow students and I, ranging in majors from Information<br>Technology to Software Engineering, have come up with an idea that could
<br>very well benefit the implementation of your proposed school server in<br>the developing countries where they are installed. Since the school<br>administrators will usually have little to no knowledge of how to<br>maintain and administrate over a computer network, much less address
<br>issues that might arise through use, we believe that a GUI based systems<br>administration software suite could be developed to help these teachers<br>and other school faculty to maintain the school infrastructure after the
<br>initial installation of the OLPC project systems in their schools.<br><br>The software suite would be a GUI front end to a variety of scripts that<br>could repair permissions in a standardized manner, perform network wide
<br>automated system updating, and even diagnose networking problems in the<br>local mesh network around the school server. Think of a very simplified<br>version of Apple's Remote Desktop administrative software program, just
<br>without the inclusion of any VNC front ends. To diagnose networking<br>problems, there could be a graphical representation on screen of various<br>portions of the Mesh network, and through varying means, show the server
<br>administrator if there is a machine that is not sending or receiving<br>certain network protocol packets, or not transmitting or receiving<br>signals properly. This could lead to diagnosis of a broken antenna or<br>just an indication that a certain laptop is not functioning properly.
<br>This kind of program would make it very easy for school faculty who<br>supervise the OLPC implementation in each school to maintain and<br>troubleshoot their infrastructure and find specific machines that may<br>need maintenance.
<br><br>We also had the idea to make a very user-friendly backup suite that<br>could back up an OLPC machine's OS install onto the server in case of<br>hardware failure on a student's machine. But backup software has been a
<br>staple of your server development vision for some time now, so we do not<br>know how far along that might be or what you do have planned.<br><br>If you are interested in further development of these ideas into actual<br>
programs, we have a group that would like to come on board and<br>participate in this great humanitarian endeavor. We could develop all or<br>a part of this software suite and bring to the table ideas and insight<br>that you might otherwise not already have. We would like to do our part
<br>to help bring modern resources and education to the world in order to<br>make this planet a better, more prosperous place for all.<br><br><br>--<br>Chase Putnam<br>Student Systems Administrator<br>Information Technology Student
<br>Rochester Institute of Technology<br><br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>Server-devel mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Server-devel@laptop.org">Server-devel@laptop.org</a><br><a href="http://mailman.laptop.org/mailman/listinfo/server-devel">
http://mailman.laptop.org/mailman/listinfo/server-devel</a><br><br></blockquote></div><br>