- January 8, 2004:
Lots of news - Allan was promoted to VP at Downsview Collegiate and will leave Emery at end of Jan 2004.
We didn't get the IBM Eclipse grant so we're still short of funds.
Tim, a co-op student from University of Waterloo, has joined Emery and will evaluate open source applications and recommend which to use to Jim.
Dominic will be using Jack lab starting next semester, Feb 2004. He only has 18 diskless PCs so we'll send over 6 more. The 6 we send will be identical hardware to the others but will have internal hard drives with SuSE 9.0 installed.
Jocelyn is working on an end-of-term teacher questionnaire which we'll give to all teachers who used the open source lab at any time during the semester.
Allan wants us to upgrade OpenOffice to the latest version.
Next meeting will be at 10AM on Wednesday January 28,2004.
- December 19, 2003:
Nick connected the new line to Hilltop. A significant improvement in throughput was noticed. Measurements indicate the throughput increased from 100,000 bps to 500,000 bps. This is still below expectations. We'll now ask our ISP to investigate.
Next meeting is scheduled for January 8, 2004 at 12 noon.
- November 27, 2003:
Some mixup re new line installation. Now scheduled to take place on Monday Dec 1, 2003.
I gave Jim and Allan copies of 2 live Linux CDs; Knoppix and FreeChem. I also demonstrated rasmol on Linux. Also briefly showed the power of the bc calculator.
Allan wants Java installed onto Jill/Hilltop. Also, does Java on Linux have some function to activate lines on the parallel port? I will investigate. Also, after the meeting, I installed Java as well as JEdit. Will post notes in the Teacher Training section of The Lab link at this site.
Jocelyn is working on student/teacher questionnaire. Jim advised we get all paperwork (Seneca/Emery forms) completed and signed off this year if we expect to run the questionnaires in Jan 2004.
PASCO has provided us with the protocols for their ScienceLab 500 Interface. A student will begin coding an API (Application Programmers Interface) in C language in Jan 2004. Hopefully we'll have some results by summer 2004. For details see the PASCO pages on our Projects link.
Next meeting is scheduled for Dec 8, 2003 at Emery starting at 12pm.
- November 10, 2003:
Jocelyn returned the completed TDSB partnership agreement form.
To solve our slow network problems, Seneca agreed to pay ($2675.00) to install two new lines. One from the main office to Jill's lab and the other from Jill's lab to Jack's lab. Allan will notify Nick as to the day this work should be done.
I explained the Eclipse proposal I made to IBM. We'll know if our idea is approved sometime in January 2004.
To get Jim using the Linux system I will demo a Live Linux CD during our next meeting.
Next meeting is scheduled for Nov 24 at 12pm.
- November 5, 2003:
Andrew (a Seneca student) has volunteered to investigate the possibility of using the PASCO 500 interface on Linux. I gave Andrew the PASCO equipment loaned to us by Jim.
- November 4, 2003:
I installed ltsp_floppyd-3.0.0-0.i386.rpm to give the client machines access to their local FDDs using mtools (mdir, mcopy, mdel, mformat, etc). Allan tested and it worked correctly. I updated the /etc/skel file on Jill so new users will also have access to the FDD.
- October 15, 2003:
Internet speed is still slow. I set up squid as a transparent caching server on Hilltop. This should help. Details are on the Lab pages under tech support.
Client floppy diskettes do not work.
We were loaned one PASCO 500 serial port interface and analog port temperature sensor to test under Linux.
A suggestion was made that we should begin a catalog of Linux configurations that would suit high school students. For example, default home directory permissions.
Hilltop's Apache web server is now working. Allan will decide on the eventual content for the home page.
E-mail to/from Hilltop now works. SuSE 8.2 uses Postfix.
I also created a script (superkill) to allow a teacher to logout any student. More details are on the Lab page.
Next "official" meeting is scheduled for November 10, 2003 starting at 12:00pm (noon).
- October 12, 2003:
Our DSL line is installed but speed is very poor. Did some timings today:
hal.humberc.on.ca to hilltop.emeryci.org 79,000bps using ttcp
www. kernel.org to hilltop.emeryci.org 92,000bps using ftp
The good news is that our internal speed is blinding. Data moves at 100,000,000bps thru the Linksys switch from hilltop to jill.
- Sept 29, 2003:
We're still having cable problems. Today we found one cable had a broken RJ45 connector and had fallen out of Hilltop's jack. No wonder the network wasn't working. Also, it appears that many connectors will have to be redone since the students who did the wiring did not follow the correct connection scheme for RJ45 connectors. We'll need to purchase more connectors.
Also, we noticed that Jill gets strange errors on bootup:
Keyboard controller jammed 0x1D
Timeout AT keybooard not present
- Sept 22, 2003:
School semester ends on Jan 31, 2004.
We agreed to do one student/teacher sample this semester and possibly 3 samplings in the winter 2004 semester. These samplings will most likely be on-line multiple choice questionnaires.
We will also try to draw up a plan for phase II.
TDSB will send us a template which we'll use as a partnership agreement.
There will be no grade 12 programming class next semester.
Fathom, a geometry graphic program is currently used in math curriculum. Also, another named Geometry Sketch Pad. Are there OS alternatives?
Next meeting will be Wednesday, Oct 15 (12:30 - 1:30). Meetings for November will be on Nov 10 and Nov 24.
- September 11, 2003:
Grade 9 and 10 math use TI83 graphing calculators.
Chemistry students currently use "rasmole" a DOS program to render 3-D molecules.
Grade 12 students use Java as introductory programming language.
Science students use PASCO science lab.
None of the Emery teachers use "teacher helpers" in the classroom.
Some things to investigate include:
openoffice.org
an autocad for Linux
proxy web server
I delivered several Linux books to Allan as well as 2 SuSE 8.2 DVD's.
Installed xpaint onto Jill.
Allan moved 2 of Jack's computers to Jill lab. The MAC addresses are
00 90 27 5B 6B 56
00 90 27 57 C7 D6
Also, explained how to use "chmod" to disable games on Jill. Apparently students love those Linux games.
We'll attempt to have "official" meetings every 2 weeks.
- September 8, 2003:
I sent the list of Seneca S/N's to Katharine.
- September 5, 2003:
Machines in Jill lab are all connected. Grade 10 students are making up the cables.
No external network yet.
May need a repeater (or hub) to connect to Jack lab. The distance may be over 300 feet.
- August 28, 2003:
Seneca S/N for servers are
165282 PIII Server (hilltop)
170262 Dual Xeon (jill)
170261 Dual Xeon (jack)
- August 27, 2003:
It will cost around $1000 to move all PCs to Emery.
The initial courses that will use this lab are
ICE 3M
ICE 4M
TEE 20
MPM 1D
MPM 2D
Course outlines can be downloaded from www.edu.gov.on.ca
- August 19, 2003:
Installed LILO on Jill.
Also configured /etc/hosts file
jill.emeryci.org 192.168.0.254
jack.emeryci.org 192.168.0.253
hilltop.emeryci.org 192.168.0.252
I also reconfigured the firewall (hilltop) so ssh, mail are allowed from external hosts.
- August 18, 2003:
Moved 3.0GHz dual xeon server to staging/testing area. Installed SuSE 8.2 plus rsh server and xosview.
Floppy diskette did not work. No floppy controller. Seems GRUB somehow disables it at boot time. Solution was to switch to LILO.
- August 12, 2003:
Moved Firewall (Hilltop) to staging/testing area (room 2171) and reinstalled SuSE 8.2 onto 2.8 GHz dual xeon server.
Installed Creative Labs CDROM and sound card (VIBRA) into client PII machine.
- August 8, 2003:
Experimented with local applications by moving client lib to lib-ltsp and then copied server lib to client lib. Installed termcap lib from SUSE 8.2 and then copied it from /usr/lib to /opt/ltsp/i386/usr/lib
xinitd would not start. Copied over SuSE 8.2 xinetd. /usr/local/bin ??
syslog daemon redirects all messages to server.
xosview works using rsh on client.
- August 7, 2003:
Modified /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/rc.local to mount home from 192.168.0.252 (firewall). Set up client so ldconfig runs. Had to add line to rc.local after creating /tmp directory
/sbin/ldconfig -C /tmp/ld.so.cache
but created link in etc first.
ln -s /tmp/ld.so.cache ld.so.cache
- August 6, 2003:
I set up an older PIII machine as the firewall, NIS and NFS server. The NFS server will serve the /home directory. I installed all SuSE 8.2 packages plus xosview. Also, installed ltsp_local_apps RMP as well as rshd.
Tested NFS by setting the firewall machine to not serve NFS, instead it's just an NFS client. The application server will serve /home.
- August 5, 2003: Configured X chooser. Had to edit rc.d/sample and added
/usr/X11R6/bin/X -indirect 192.168.0.254
and then rename the file to chooser. Finally edit lts.conf and include
RCFILE_01 = chooser
- August 1, 2003:
Worked on getting xdmcp to work. I also set up the login manager to disallow users drom rebooting or shutting down the server.
Use netstat -a | grep xdm to see if display manager is running.
To get the mouse wheel working I edited lts.conf file to include these lines:
X_Mouse_Protocol = "IMPS/2"
X_Mouse_Buttons = 5
X_Mouse_Mapping = "4 5"
- July 31, 2003:
Installed SuSE on dual xeon (3.0GHZ) second server.
- July 28, 2003:
Set up new xeon-based servers: Here's what I did:
- Installed ALL SuSE 8.2 packages plus xosview.
- Setup /etc/dhcpd.conf file and /etc/sysconfig/dhcpd to use eth1
- Had to enable tftp and nfsserver.
- Used SAX to change server to 1024x768 resolution.
- Started xfs font server (not necessary).
- Installed x-font RPM.
- July 25, 2003:
Installed version 1.03 of 8211 driver. Original version 1.05 did not work properly. Got errors on ifconfig eth1 commit. Could not set anything.
The MAC address for the AMDtek wireless card is 00:30:BD:E0:58:75. I added /bin/dhclient to linuxrc file in initrd image.
- July 21, 2003:
Worked on making syslinux floppy disk. Need my own kernel (700k). I edited /linuxrc to _not_ do pcmcia stuff.
Started working on SuSE based terminal server. Minimum LTSP required packages include core, kernel, x-core. Had to change /etc/sysconfig/dhcpd to use eth1 and not eth0.
- July 18, 2003:
Built a minimal Kernel and initrd image with the 8211 driver.Used syslinux to put both on floppy. Booted floppy but kernel (?) killed init, probably because init=linuxrc on kernel cmd line.
- July 15, 2003:
More work on wireless booting. Here are the facts for the Belkin cards I'm using:
Vendor ID is 1317
Device ID 8201
IRQ is 9
- July 9, 2003:
The diskless client machines will be 5 year old PII MMX machines running at 333MHz. Each has 128MB RAM and use the Award BIOS.
Allocated room S2171 as the room where the 40 clients will be tested.
- June 24, 2003:
Investigated LDAP. Used openldap-2.1.21 for RedHat 9. SuSE had easy configuration for NIS so will probably use that.
Ordered 2 belkin F5D6001 PCI wireless cards to investigate wireless diskless booting. Price for both cards was $166.78.
- June 20, 2003:
Worked on packet filter on server. To set up NAT (Masquerading) I entered this
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
and
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
- June 17, 2003:
I set up an NFS server on a P4 system. Had to edit /etc/exports file and flush iptables. I also set up another diskless client with an ATI Rage Pro graphics card. I had to edit /etc/ltsp.conf on the server to set this station to use the SVGA driver.
- June 13, 2003:
Began building a small diskless system based on LTSP. Initially using RedHat 9. Built a boot diskette from ROM-O-MATIC. Some things to watch for include: DHCP server, iptables, tcp wrappers and the tftp daemon. I set up a PII (300MHz) system with an ATI Rage AGP graphics card. When I booted from the floppy it took 1 minute to get the logon screen, 5 seconds for Gnome to start and 10 seconds for Mosilla to load. The server was a P4 system.