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[Computerbank] Re: [cai-sa] Teen Challenge -Network
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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State Coordinator
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http://sa.computerbank.org.au/
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