Personnel skill levels (was Re: SEUL homepage)

[Doug Loss <dloss@csrlink.net>]

Shannon Spurling wrote:
> 
> [...] I must bring up the point that the average
> computer teacher/ network support person dose not have the skills to
> properly administer a Linux server in it's current implementation. Most
> Linux users are computer geeks, and they approach the creation of these
> Linux distributions as if you are one too. There needs to be system tools
> made so that the average teacher can maintain their Linux box securely
> without having to take four more years of college. 

This brings up a couple of points.  First, the linuxconf program
<http://www.solucorp.qc.ca/linuxconf/> is a tool that is very helpful in
managing your Linux server.  Also, Mason
<http://www.pobox.com/~wstearns/mason/> makes it a lot easier to setup a
firewall than it used to be.  Steve Tonneson's K12AccountAdmin software
<http://k12admin.cmsd.bc.ca/> can be useful for account management. 
There are also some other programs like psntools
<http://www.psn.ie/users/ad/psntools/> that can be useful in an
educational setting.

One of the problems here (and I agree it's widespread) is that the
administration of most schools' networks is in the hands of people who
have little experience or knowledge in such.  This is in part because
these networks have generally grown from the bottom up, connecting
separate computers together, rather than from the top down, as in
installing a telephone system.  When the whole system (telephone) gets
dropped in place at once, the administration usually realizes they need
someone knowledgeable to maintain it, either in house or on contract. 
But when the connections just appear gradually, they often get in over
their heads without realizing it, and the person showing the most
interest/complaining the loudest gets responsibility for the school
network.

One of the ways to work with this problem is for knowledgeable Linux
users and sysadmins to volunteer to help their local schools with the
installation and administration of their Linux systems.  I'm trying this
in my local school district and with a parochial school in town.  These
approaches have to be made politely and humbly, as there's already
someone in each school who is responsible for their computers.  If you
go in viewing yourself as the white knight come to fix everything,
you'll mostly piss off the person or persons you should be working
with.  There's also the political aspect.  In my local school district
the tech guy (who knows Apple and not much else) is being pressured very
heavily to move towards NT.  Logical arguments don't seem to be making
much difference (not from me to him, but from him to his superiors).

> [...] The school will pay some consultant that
> knows enough to put Linux on a box, and then he hooks it up and leaves. Now
> what dose the school do with it? I'm not saying that Linux is not good. I
> love it, and I see endless possibilities, but we also have to know who we
> are dealing with and work to make it available to them in a manner they can
> understand and work with effectively. 

Bluntly, then the school is run by fools.  This wouldn't work for any
network operating system--Linux, NetWare, NT, etc.  What's needed in
that case is what I mentioned above, local Linux volunteers to help
administer the systems and to train the school personnel in the
maintenance and administration of it.

> A secure simple to install and
> maintain distribution would be a start. That would mean that you would only
> install needed server daemons and users, not every daemon and default user
> account available, and a way for the admin to get a list of vital system
> parameters without having to dig through the source code. Don't even make
> them worry about source code! Chances are they are not CS majors,  and
> probably never wrote a program before. I think this would be a good project
> for any one with the time.
> 
Take a look at Independence <http://www.independence.seul.org>.  They
are developing a distro designed for ease of installation and use for
home users.  Many of the things that they are doing would be applicable
here too.  That would be for the workstation machines, of course. For
the servers, the tools I mentioned above go a good way toward what
you're asking for, I think.  What's important is that the admins get
some training in administration, even if it's just reading through some
O'Reilly books on system administration.  It might not be a bad idea to
have a modified installation routine similar to RedHat's with options
beyond Workstation, Server, and Custom.  You could add Gateway/Firewall,
Mail/Web Server, File/Print Server, and maybe a few others.  Each one
would install the required packages for those functions with settings
optimized for those specific purposes.  This is probably beyond the
scope of this group at the moment, but once Independence gets most of
its work out of the way we can float the idea to them.

Bill Tihen is working on a series of educational HOWTOs, documents on
how to deploy/employ Linux in an educational environment.  He probably
will have a good deal of useful information on these points as time goes
by.

-- 
Doug Loss                 A life spent making mistakes is not only
Data Network Coordinator  more honorable, but more useful than a
Bloomsburg University     life spent doing nothing.
dloss@bloomu.edu                G. B. Shaw