Business Desktop proposal, Any takers???

[Daniel Robitaille]

On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 11:17 PM, Darryl Moore <darryl at moores.ca> wrote:
> Hi Daniel,
>
> I was originally going to use 8.04, but the next LTS distribution will
> be coming out (i think) for 10.10 which will still be in the life span
> of 9.04. So if I have to upgrade in 10.10 anyway, what does it matter if
> I'm upgrading from 9.04 or 8.04?

like Joel wrote in that other email, the upgrade path from 9.04 to
10.10 will be more complex with more steps than the one from 8.04.

It also depends if you have to add to the mix for some consumer
specific 3rd party software that may be working well for 8.04 but are
officially unsupported for non-LTS releases.  But on the other side,
you may run into hardware and/or software that can only run with newer
versions than the latest LTS release.

> Besides, I've found there are so many things that just simply work
> better in 9.04.

Some people have been running into problem with some intel graphics
chipsets and the 9.04's Xorg.  I was one of them with one of the alpha
version of 9.04 on this laptop (but granted, I haven't tested the
final release to see if that got sorted out and instead reverted back
to 8.04).


> Backups.
>
> Done nightly via rsync to a remote server. DSL will serve most small
> businesses well for this. If they need additional bandwidth then I'd
> install a MLPPP DSL connection fairly cheaply.

I semi-recently discovered rsnapshot to maintain my rsync's backups.
Great little program to help maintain multiple hourly/daily/weekly
snapshots of your filesystems, with a very optimized use of the disk
space.  Similar to OSX's Time Machine, without the fancy but useless
graphical interface :)

One comment about nightly backups:  works well for desktops; may not
work as well for laptops that don't always have access to that
friendly DSL connection; think here of someone on the road half the
time using crappy hotel connections.  The laptop will have to know to
only attempt these rsync backups when it is on an apppropriate
connection.


> diagnostics
>
> I will also run diagnostic scripts which monitor all hard drives on all
> machines via the SMART interface, and alert the admin of any impending
> failures. At the same time I will monitor CPU temperature and memory.
> (These scripts are written and working)

it's getting a bit long in the tooth, but I have always loved the
BigBrother scripts/web interface to show me a glance the status of
various computers/printers/devices.  I'm sure other alternative
exists.

> All important servers would also have liveCD versions so if the
> server(s) go down, they can simply plug in the CD and instantly get
> those services back. LDAP DHCP and DNS come to minder here. without
> those services the network is dead.

for smaller groups, a nice hardcoded /etc/hosts file with all the
local hosts' IPs in there is a nice simple and robust solution against
any form of single-point-of-failure caused by DHCP+DNS servers.  But
granted, it doesn't scale well once you reach a certain group-size.

> Also I would give them a liveCD version of the basic workstation setup
> so they can easily take any machine they want and install my basic setup
> and have a new machine up on their network in a matter of minutes
> without any help from me.

have you looked at FAI?  I use that for clusters.  When node/ client
computer boots up, it asks via PXE to  a centralized server if it
needs to install an OS provided by that server, if not it boots
whatever is already on the local hard drive.   When you need to
upgrade these desktops, you install the new OS image on that FAI
server, tell it to wait for a reboot desktop X, and then with that
desktop reboot, the new OS will be pushed to it, do whatever disk
partition is needed, install extra packages, etc.  Great way to push
OS upgrades or barebone OS rebuilds to these desktops without the need
to carry live-CD around from desktop to desktop.



-- 
Daniel Robitaille