History for WorkStations

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**Maintaining Student and Teacher Workstations in Schools**

- Debian, the Linux distribution I find best for school situations; careful management of licences, values the *secure and stable* over the *cool and fancy* but leaves room for lots of creativity.

 - Create rescue bootdisks with **mkboot kernelname**

- Libranet, a Vancouver-based Debian-based snazzy linux distribution http://www.libranet.com , specifically it has **adminmenu** for configuration

- Replicator, a debian-based free *ghost-like* replication program http://replicator.sourceforge.net which can also copy windows partitions

- Deep Freeze, a Vancouver-based company that produces a commercial program ideal for windows workstations  when  you want to minimize maintainance woes  http://www.winselect.com/


**Replicator Procedure**

1. edit **/etc/replicator/replicator.conf** appropriately

2. create a monolithic kernel (avoid modules, compile NIC drivers right in)
  then create a bootdisk

3. create **mini-root** and export it via **nfs**

4. run **rsync -daemon**

5. boot up **target computer** with **replicator bootdisk**, answer 4 questions
and watch do the replication/ghosting in 5-10 minutes


**X-terminal Mode**

- setup xdm on (several) strong servers

- modify files in /etc/X11/xdm to suit taste (I like icewm with minimalist theme)

- worry about security (by default debian prevents tcp access)

- make sure Xsession is what you want, or tell users about ~/.xsession