[K12OSN] Need Help

John Lucas mrjohnlucas at gmail.com
Sat Jul 7 13:41:17 UTC 2007


On Saturday 07 July 2007 08:48, Don Gould wrote:
> To anyone listening,
>
> I am the Technology guy at a small christian school and I have been
> to to seminars.  I am ready to make the leap to K12osn.
> What I have :
>
> 30 computers in the lab
> 24 stand alone
> 6 networked internet machines
> all are windows 98, 2000 or ME
> 9 printers 4 of which work
>
> I need to get a server or build one.  But I need to know what I need
> in the server.  I nned to keep the win os for stand alone use.  But I
> will netwok all the machines for K12.  Will I be able to print my
> windows documents thru the server and do I also need win server
> software as well as K12? I will use the sever for the internet.  I
> plan to get one or two netwok printer to serve all my printing needs
> if that will work.  Feel free to answer all the question I dont even
> know I need to ask to get this started.  Thanks in advance for your
> help.
>
> In desperate straights
>
> Don Gould
> Hollandale Christian School
>

The good news is that you won't need any Windows server software to network 
your stand-alone Windows workstations. You can use Samba on Linux as a Domain 
Controller for a Windows NT-style Domain. The easiest way to do this is to 
use the "smbldap-installer" scripts by Matt Oquist and David Trask:

	http://majen.net/smbldap/

The server that runs Samba can be your print server for Mac, Windows and Linux 
clients.

The rest of your queries need a little more information. Are you intending to 
dual-boot the workstations? If so will they be stand-alone Linux/Windows 
stations or Windows/terminal with LTSP? Or, are you going to stick with 
Windows and just use OSS applications? If you are sticking with Windows, can 
you update any or all of them to Windows 2000 (at least)? Win98 and ME are 
not the best platform for networking (to say the least).

In any case, start with a hardware inventory for each machine that includes:

	- CPU type and clockrate
	- installed RAM
	- Hard drive capacity
	- Ethernet NIC make/model
	- Video card and monitor type

If all systems are identical that is a good thing, but I suspect that you have 
several configurations. The capabilites of the system is limited by 
CPU/RAM/disk. Make sure these systems are up to your needs.


-- 
        "History doesn't repeat itself; at best it rhymes."
                        - Mark Twain

| John Lucas                          MrJohnLucas at gmail.com               |
| St. Thomas, VI 00802                http://mrjohnlucas.googlepages.com/ |
| 18.3°N, 65°W                        AST (UTC-4)                         |




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