[K12OSN] K12LTSP 3.2 for RHEL, LDAP config wishlist ..

[Les Mikesell]

On Sun, 2004-08-29 at 14:59, Andy Rabagliati wrote:

> I am delivering email for a domain (the school) to a dynamic dialup.
> 
> Thus SMTP ( whose ultimate target is the MX - fixed IP) is unsuitable.

I think if I had to set something like that up today, I would
try to find one or a few stable hubs that could be used as
smarthosts by the leaf nodes and MX for them. The trick to
making it work would be to bring up a VPN tunnel from the
leaf to the hub server when it comes on line and having
stable (private OK) addressing for the VPN endpoints and
what you route through them.

> I choose UUCP, because the caller can request delivery of the mail,
> from a dynamic dialup, even.

ETRN would work, given tunnels to known addresses.

> However, the main reason I choose UUCP is that I can carry the UUCP
> spool directories via a UUCP memory stick to somewhere that does not
> have, or cannot afford, dialup connectivity.

That's a little harder.  I usually don't consider carrying
something smaller than a laptop...

> For folks in the 1st world, it is often hard to imagine what it was
> like to not have cheap 24hour connectivity. If you knew UUCP, it
> /ruled/ at a time when American connectivity was at the same evolutionary
> step as Africa's connectivity now (especially around price).

Yes, I used and abused uucp back in the day.  I was actually
involved in getting AT&T to add the \M, \m escapes to
the dialer strings back in the dawn of the smartmodem era
(NDA's, beta copies, and all that...). Before that it would
only work with specialized dialer hardware on a different
port than the modem.

> It was developed by people (at the time) who cared about price and
> service - in the same environment. I do not feel like re-inventing
> the wheel - it worked fine before.

Yes, it does do a good job of mail delivery.  It just is hard
to scale and eventually you'll probably want better access to
networks behind the connecting machine.  And it is hard to
beat being able to do 'rsync -essh -z ...' directly to a
target for efficiency.

> I do need LDAP auth though. The Shuttleworth Foundation are putting in
> the computer labs ( http://slug.org.za/ ) - and leveraging heavily
> (of course) off LTSP. I am adding WWW and email to those classrooms.
> The hurdle is mostly the teachers. We are sorting out the technology.

If the SMEserver project were in a little better shape I'd
recommend that for your gateways and local email hubs.
That's about as easy as it gets for a local admin to
manage users, groups and local web sites. I have several
where I've dropped in CIPE as a vpn to a common hub
but they have been a little bit of trouble to keep
up to date.

---
  Les Mikesell
   les at futuresource.com