[12:22] <ball> Interesting
[12:22] <ball> What kind of community is it?
[12:23] <Solifugus> ball... honestly.. it should be clearer about what interface it is asking for during installation... and it should not, by default, hand out dhcp to any device that asks.. and, honestly, these services shouldn't be on by default...  It gives linux a bad name when a simple mistake can cause so much damage.
[12:23] <Solifugus> to a network..
[12:23] <Solifugus> I just suggesting a few default changes for safety and security...
[12:24] <ball> Solifugus: ah, okay.
[12:24] <ball> I would have thought it was important to make clear which interface was for the terminal network and which for the outside world.
[12:25] <ball> racter: are you building a mesh network too?
[12:25] <racter> ball: it's just a neighborhood lab on the near south side (pilsen which is a mostly latin(o|a) neighborhood)
[12:25] <racter> ball: yeah!  sort of.
[12:25] <racter> trying to get it going again but it's been hard to organize ;)
[12:26] <ball> racter: have you looked at what they're doing in Urbana, or at smesh.org ?
[12:26] <ball> Ah, I see links to CUwin
[12:26] <ball> ...that answers that question
[12:26] <racter> ya the urbana stuff is an important model for us - but i don't know smesh
[12:27] <racter> but checking it out now :)
[12:32] <ball> hello jgedeon
[12:33] <jgedeon> Hello ball.
[12:34] <ball> It's nice that mesh routers are available off-the-shelf now (I'm looking at the linked Meraki stuff)
[12:34] <racter> yeah that stuff looks really cool
[12:34] <racter> & cheap
[12:41] <ball> racter: that's a big attraction.  I wonder how proprietary it is though.
[12:42] <ball> ...could probably do the same thing in a more extensible way using Linksys wireless routers.
[12:42] <ball> hello kleinmat, n2diy
[12:42] <racter> ball - ya true, or recycled pc's with cuwin software
[12:43] <n2diy> hi ball
[12:45] <ball> racter: of course, it's harder to persuade people to put an IBM 5170 on their window sill ;-)
[12:46] <ball> Isn't Pilson where they have the big May 5th party?
[12:47] <racter> ya there are a lot of big parties down here ;)
[12:53] <ball> I have to go to lunch now.  Hopefully back in about half an hour.
[04:16] <ball> hello bronze
[04:23] <ball> racter: may I PM you?
[04:57] <andrew____> I'm early on the Linux learning curve seeking to build a school network.  So far I've got thin client authentication working.  Can someone confirm that Ubuntu has the ability to do "thick" client authenticatiion comparable to an MS Windows environment.
[04:58] <ball> hello andrew____
[04:58] <andrew____> Howdy
[05:01] <ball> Are your "thin clients" really X terminals?
[05:05] <ball> Will your "thick clients" be PCs running the "Desktop" edition of Edubuntu?
[05:06] <andrew____> The thin client I have set up to test with is an X terminal, though I could just as easily run desktop on it, if it helps performance.
[05:07] <ball> I think the choice is probably less about performance and more about ease of management
[05:07] <ball> (with the thin client setup, you have one Linux machine to manage instead of a roomful)
[05:08] <ball> ...you could also do away with hard disks and things if that's convenient or desirable)
[05:08] <ball> (if I'm reading the Web page correctly)
[05:08] <andrew____> Thin clients are a snap to manage. I get this...but we're also likely to be investing in Laptops because of portability...I want to keep the school on the same platform, largely, but not every machine will be a thin client.
[05:09] <andrew____> Can ubuntu run authentication for the non thin clients on the same userbase as the thin client server.
[05:11] <ball> Thing about laptops is, they get lost, stolen and/or broken.
[05:11] <andrew____> Well, I'm seeing LDAP and NFS in different places, but it doesn't look user friendly at all.
[05:11] <ball> ...they seem like ideal candidates.
[05:11] <ball> (to be X terminals)
[05:11] <andrew____> Yes, but don't you need a gigabit network if you're running more than a dozen X terminals?
[05:12] <andrew____> Wireless doesn't have those speeds, right?
[05:13] <andrew____> The cards in the Dells our school is considering are 54 MB/s...how would this affect performance?
[05:13] <ball> andrew____: I'm not sure you need gigabit... I would probably use a gigabit link to the server and 100baseTX to each workstation
[05:13] <ball> How many of the terminals would be wireless?
[05:14] <andrew____> For now, 15 out of 70.
[05:14] <ball> Might be worth running separate Linux installs then, despite the management headache.
[05:14] <andrew____> But you can't buy laptops without hard drives, can you?
[05:15] <ball> The edubuntu people can probably give you a more clear idea of what the practical limits are.
[05:15] <andrew____> But what's the authentication protocol?
[05:15] <ball> andrew____: probably not, sadly.
[05:16] <andrew____> I'm trying to decide whether Ubuntu has enough "enterprise level" tools to actually run a larger network.
[05:16] <ball> andrew____: I don't know what they use.
[05:16] <ball> Kerberos?
[05:16] <ball> I'm not keen on Ubuntu, but edubuntu is an interesting project.
[05:17] <ball> perhaps "product" is the word there.
[05:17] <ball> There's enough people in the channel that you'd think there'd be someone around in a position to advise.
[05:18] <andrew____> I'll keep poking my head in and asking.
[05:18] <ball> ok
[05:18] <andrew____> thanks for your two cents.
[05:18] <ball> I'm not sure it was worth that much ;-)
[05:19] <ball> My idea of using gigabit uplink to the server and 100baseTX to the terminals is so that no one terminal can choke the connection to the server.
[05:19] <ball> I'm interested in knowing what people here think of that.
[05:20] <ball> Suppose the logic breaks down above about eight terminals though ;-)
[05:21] <andrew____> I'm thinking of how a building is plumbed, and your concept seems good by analogy.
[05:22] <andrew____> I'm not sure water and data packets enjoy the same physics, though...
[05:22] <andrew____> If a switch is 1000B/s on one side and 100B/s on the other, doesn'
[05:23] <ball> I'm told a decent switch will buffer the frames appropriately.
[05:23] <andrew____> doesn't that make the whole network 100?
[05:23] <ball> No, it shouldn't.
[05:23] <ball> (unless your switch is really broken)
[05:23] <andrew____> Hmmm that's good to know.
[05:24] <andrew____> I was thinking in terms of frequency transmission.  An AM tuner can't decipher FM signals...but I guess a switch is set up to autodetect...
[05:25] <ball> If I had a large network to build (I don't, mine are all small), I'd extend the concept to craft a non-blocking (or at least a less-blocking) network
[05:25] <ball> AM and FM are different animals to 1000baseT and 100baseTX
[05:25] <ball> (a switch buffers the frames)
[05:26] <andrew____> A frame is a packet of digital info set to a carrier frequency, no?
[05:27] <andrew____> Perhaps I'm sorely miscomprehending network data transmission.
[05:27] <ball> Yes, you're talking about radio (which I understand)
[05:27] <ball> Ethernet (at least the kind we're talking about) is baseband, no carrier involved.
[05:28] <ball> Suppose you had an AM receiver, a mag tape loop and an FM transmitter
[05:28] <ball> ...that's your ethernet switch ;-)
[05:29] <ball> It receives, stores and then forwards.
[05:29] <ball> (bad analogy, but it fits your description)
[05:30] <andrew____> Baseband means what, that the 0s and 1s are arriving at whatever frequency they arrive at? There's no uniformity to their transmission?
[05:30] <ball> No, you're describing asynchronous transmission there.
[05:31] <ball> forget frequency.
[05:31] <ball> Your AM and FM analogy made me think of radio, where the information is modulated onto a radio frequency carrier
[05:31] <ball> 100baseTX and 1000baseT don't use a carrier like that, so the AM/FM thing is only good as a (very) loose analogy
[05:32] <ball> It's best avoided because there are networks where they're used in the literal sense.
[05:32] <ball> (but not usually wired local area networks)
[05:33] <ball> baseband means "with no carrier"
[05:33] <ball> broadband (used to) mean(s) with an RF carrier
[05:33] <andrew____> I'm just trying to imagine what's actually occurring, in terms of voltage, in those 8 wires.  You referred to a "frame"...which I assume is a packet that is enclosed in some kind of marker...
[05:33] <ball> andrew____: yes, a frame is an Ethernet "packet"
[05:34] <ball> inside your frames (perhaps broken up) are IP datagrams ("Internet packets")
[05:34] <ball> frame and datagram are less ambiguous terms.
[05:34] <ball> Someone says "packet" to me, I have to figure out what they mean by the context of the conversation.
[05:35] <andrew____> So these arrive and get stored in the RAM of the switch, and then re-transmitted.
[05:35] <ball> Probably not in ordinary RAM, more likely in a shift register inside a chip inside the switch
[05:35] <ball> (sane people try not to think too much about that ;-)
[05:36] <andrew____> And bottlenecks occur when the switch can accept all the new packets that are arriving?
[05:36] <andrew____> can't, rather
[05:36] <andrew____> I'm a physics teacher, insane by creed.
[05:37] <ball> Modern switches are apparently able to ask the device at the other end of a cable to stop sending (some kind of flow control).  I don't know the details.  One of the nice things about Ethernet (and especially IP) is that if things get too clogged up, the switch has the option of simply discarding frames.
[05:37] <ball> Do you know about the ISO 7-layer model?
[05:38] <ball> ISO OSI.
[05:38] <andrew____> No
[05:38] <andrew____> I've seen it in spec, but just glossed over it.
[05:38] <ball> first hit: http://networking.ringofsaturn.com/Protocols/sevenlayer.php
[05:39] <ball> I haven't read that, so I don't know how poorly it's written
[05:39] <ball> Basic theory is that there are layers... at the bottom you have the hardware itself and the voltages that physics teachers love.
[05:39] <ball> Above that you have framing and all the nice Ethernet stuff
[05:39] <ball> Above that you have the network layer, which is where IP lives.
[05:39] <andrew____> That looks great!  I've got it bookmarked
[05:41] <ball> I have to do a lab science as part of my degree.  If I were not mathematically challenged, physics might be fun.
[05:42] <ball> Oh well, I'll have to take tree-hugging or something.
[05:42] <ball> "Astronomy without maths"
[05:42] <andrew____> You're a CS major?
[05:43] <ball> Another 7-layer link: http://pablotron.org/download/7_layer_burrito.html
[05:43] <ball> I.T, because C.S. implies Maths.
[05:43] <ball> ...and maths is numbers >1
[05:43] <ball> (== scary)
[05:44] <andrew____> Think about all the scary numbers in between zero and one....
[05:44] <andrew____> ;)
[05:45] <andrew____> With some division, you could get all the other numbers.
[05:46] <ball> Sorry, I only work with integers
[05:46] <andrew____> Good 4 u
[05:47] <andrew____> Hey, it's been interesting...thanks for the tips on network protocols...I've got a long way to go!
[05:47] <andrew____> To each his scary, abstract fancy.
[05:48] <andrew____> I've got to sleep so my students don't eat me for breakfast.
[05:48] <ball> Sleep well
[05:48] <andrew____> cheers
[05:59] <sbalneav> Evening all
[06:03] <ball> hello sbalneav
[06:03] <sbalneav> Hello
[06:21] <ball> brb
[06:27] <ball> Oh well, I'm going home.
[06:28] <ball> Goodbye silent readers.
[06:42] <bligoes> hallo all
[11:21] <johnsoncls> i am new django how to configure apache2 to create a site
[01:20] <RichEd> ogra: ping
[01:20] <ogra> hey :/
[01:21] <ogra> what a wasted day
[01:21] <RichEd> damn shame :(
[01:21] <ogra> yeah
[01:21] <RichEd> i've phoned anestis but he is on voicemail ...
[01:21] <ogra> i had two trains t chhose from ... and i even took the one that went earlier ...
[01:21] <RichEd> i'm looking at the agenda to see what we can do online tomorrow
[01:21] <ogra> but that still didnt help :/
[01:22] <RichEd> i'll get back to you via email ... in the meanwhile can you look again at hosting options ?
[01:22] <ogra> (that one left me a 1.5h buffer .... which i lost due to their construction crap)
[01:22] <RichEd> anestis said you can use a provide outside of the UK if it is cheaper
[01:22] <RichEd> *provider
[01:22] <ogra> i thought we did that already ... iirc heno recommended something to us we wanted to book
[01:22] <ogra> but i'll dig my mail
[01:22] <RichEd> thanks ...
[01:23] <RichEd> will it be faily easy to install moodle remotely ?
[01:23] <RichEd> *fairly
[01:23] <jsgotangco> yes
[01:23] <RichEd> jsgotangco: thanks :)
[01:23] <ogra> indeed
[01:24] <ogra> but it would be preferable to have it on ubuntu indeed :)
[01:24] <RichEd> ogra: I'll check out the latest moodle specs / features and 3rd pary options and give them a report on what we have, and what is being developed by other people and what else is still needed according to the "wishlist"
[01:24] <ogra> so finding the right provider that offers us full ubuntu support is the tricky bit ;)
[01:24] <jsgotangco> right
[01:25] <RichEd> it does not have to be on ubuntu immediately ... we can port it later, but it will be good to find someone who will host a box for us with our choice of operating system
[01:25] <ogra> RichEd, i talked to the moodle business dept. at linuxtag for nearly 1h ... not much outcome there (tie guys) but we should mentin te contact
[01:26] <ogra> RichEd, porting the data over from an ancient version (which is what i'll get on other distros) is a lot of work i'd like to avoid
[01:26] <RichEd> okay ... and we should also look at the calendar for moodle moots (I think they call their meetings that) in local areas of the partners
[01:26] <ogra> yeah
[01:28] <ogra> i think we should propbably start pushing for LoCo based support teams here as well, as soon as we ship moodle by default
[02:18] <jsgotangco> !
[02:18] <jsgotangco> moodle by default is fantastic!
[05:17] <sbalneav> Morning all
[05:17] <ogra> hey hey
[05:17] <sbalneav> Hey!
[05:17] <sbalneav> In Sweden?
[05:17] <ogra> nope
[05:31] <RichEd> hi ogra ... kalle keeps popping in and out
[05:32] <ogra> oh, where ?
[05:32] <RichEd> Trying to get the message to him ... I've aked the hotel to pass it on to Anestis tonight.
[05:32] <ogra> antoniou talked to me
[05:32] <RichEd> ogra: * kalle (n=kalle@surfburk.ludvika.se) has joined #edubuntu
[05:32] <ogra> and with him anestis
[05:32] <ogra> ah
[05:33] <bddebian> Heya
[08:03] <Jalex> I am having a problem and am getting no good advice about the solution. I upgraded to 7.04 this week and my server
[08:04] <Jalex> will not boot : "RAMDISK: ran out of compressed data"
[08:04] <Jalex> Kernel Panic
[08:04] <Jalex> Any Ideas?
[08:04] <sbalneav> That doesn't sound right.
[08:05] <sbalneav> Sounds like the kernel is mucked up.
[08:05] <sbalneav> When you see the grub message, on startup, hit escape, and see if there's a previous version of the kernel you can boot from..
[08:06] <Jalex> will do
[08:10] <Jalex> booted ok in previous kernel
[08:11] <Jalex> is there a way to remove the offending kernel?
[08:12] <sbalneav> aptitude purge <kernelpackage>
[08:13] <sbalneav> then probably try re-installing it.
[08:13] <Jalex> thanks
[11:08] <Peaceful> Can anyone recommend decent cheap thin-client hardware to use with an edubuntu classroom server?
[11:13] <Peaceful> Kamping_Kaiser: yes, and I've found all the spare pc's available and stripped them, but I still need to get 10 more thin clients up
[11:47] <Peaceful> I'm hoping to find a thin client for around $100.  Anyone found something like that that works?
[11:50] <Peaceful> I'd have to add keyboard, mouse, & monitor, obviously.