[K12OSN] mac OS X and win2003 and LTSP integration

["Terrell Prudé, Jr."]

David Trask wrote:

>"Support list for opensource software in schools." <k12osn at redhat.com> on
>Saturday, August 27, 2005 at 2:10 AM +0000 wrote:
>  
>
>>I had not thought of the separate vlan option to segregate the LTSP from 
>>the rest of the LAN ... might be an option if the Mac OS X dhcp cannot 
>>be configured to pass on the option root-path
>>    
>>
>
>Joe....Mac OS X simply needs to be "on" in order for the Mac auth stuff to
>work....it does not have to be doing anything or serving any IP's.  You
>can have it serving IP's off a NIC that's not connected to anything for
>example....I have a school that uses an E-Smith (SME server 6.01) box as
>the DHCP server yet the Macs (this is Maine...we have Mac laptops for
>every 7th and 8th grader in the state) authenticate and pull "profiles"
>etc via LDAP and OD from an Xserve running OS X server.  So you can have
>your cake and eat it too.
>  
>

Unless I misread his original post, though, the OS X server soon won't 
be there.  For some insanely stupid reason (yes, I'm being very 
judgmental here), they're bringing in a Windows 2003 server "to replace 
the Mac OS X server."  Of course, I hope that I did misread that, since 
Windows servers don't speak industry-standard LDAP or Kerberos.

As for the VLAN bit, if your switches all speak either GVRP or VTP, then 
you should be OK separating the LTSP stuff--and I mean both server 
(eth0) and terminals--from the main LAN.  Then, eth1 on the server can 
get hooked up to the main LAN.  The purpose of GVRP and VTP is to allow 
propagation of VLAN settings throughout your LAN, thus you don't have to 
reconfigure all your switches.  GVRP is the standards-based one, and VTP 
is Cisco-proprietary (they licensed it to Avaya for high dollars, I think).

Another option is to have your router do the DHCP instead of a server.  
Like you, I too have a single-NIC K12LTSP server with its DHCP server 
turned off.  We have Cisco routers on our LANs, and they make terrific 
DHCP servers.  I'm actually using the Cisco router's DHCP server to 
netboot not just the terminals, but also the thick clients (Windows and 
a few Macs).  You simply include the appropriate options in the DHCP 
scope and boom, off it goes.

--TP
_____________________
Do you GNU!? <http://www.gnu.org>
Be virus- and spam-free with Free/Open Source Software (FOSS). Check it 
out! <http://www.mozilla.org/thunderbird>