[tech] [unisfa-committee] Deep Thought

Alice McCullagh alice.mccullagh at gmail.com
Mon Jul 29 22:37:15 WST 2013


PS: Bob, I think UniSFA will happily take option 1! On the off chance that
Deep Thought turns rabid and tries to eat somebody, I will accept full
responsibility.

A note on some of the stuff we want to run: You can get iTunes to run on
Linux, but not natively. Also, it is my experience that most in-browser
video players such as iView (or Netflix or whatever else is actually
available in Australia) use Silverlight. It is really difficult to get
Silverlight to run on Linux. Sure, it's possible, if you have three hours
and a lot of patience, but the whole point of this change is so that a
moderately intelligent, computer literate person can manage Deep Thought
without ending up in the middle of the ocean, hoping that the sharks will
stay away until they reach shallow water.

Anyway Bob, we appreciate your help, but please do not take the change in
software as a personal insult to you or your abilities. It's just what will
be best for our club's needs.

On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 10:23 PM, Andrew Adamson <bob at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au>wrote:

> There are three options available to UniSFA for deepthought. I have
> detailed some of the pros and cons of each below. I must first point out
> that this is all me talking, not wheel/committee/god/cthulu/etc.
>
> =========================================================================
> 1. UniSFA installs Windows on deepthought and have their own admin control
> over it
> - Yay full control and non-uccans how to use it
> - Yay you can install itoons and netflicks on it
> - UCC needs somebody (a unisfan) to be responsible for it. This is
> because the internet connection is through UCC and the finger gets pointed
> at UCC when the machine gets botnetted. UCC can't afford to have their
> internet turned off or filtered. (This is what I was asking for on the
> UniSFA facebook group).
> - The machine will probably be moved to our insecure network. You will
> still get internet, but it will be more heavily firewalled, and possibly
> packet filtered too.
> - There will (should?) be an administrator login, and the normal unisfa
> login will be unprivileged. So you're still dependent on one or a few
> people to maintain it. I'm sorry but giving every man and his dog admin
> access is a sure path to failure. We don't even do this in UCC where most
> people are "good with computers".
> - It will be difficult for UCC to help when this machine breaks. As Luke
> pointed out in his email, "The responsibility to support a system has to
> come with the right to control its configuration." This as much due to
> passwords as due to windows - it's not easy to support windows remotely
> without the appropriate tools and setup (which we don't have on a
> non-ucc system).
>
> =========================================================================
> 2. UniSFA gives UCC a windows 7 licence and UCC installs the UCC standard
> operating environment (SOE) on it with a guest UniSFA user.
> - Yay windows, and non-uccans know how to use it
> - Yay somebody can install itoons and netflicks on it
> - deepthought practically becomes just like a UCC clubroom machine
> - you will have to poke a UCC winadmin or wheel member (of which there
> are many) to install stuff. Wheel is pretty much perpetual and the machine
> won't stop being maintained when somebody leaves uni.
> - The machine is less likely to get maintained on a regular basis
> than a linux install because it's difficult to do it quickly and remotely.
> As I've previously stated, I will not personally support windows on
> deepthought - I didn't say that somebody else wouldn't.
> - This is probably your best option from a long term reliability and
> maintainability point of view, as there are is a group of people who
> automatically have the ability to maintain it
>
> =========================================================================
> 3. Deepthought is left with some form of linux on it - pretty much the
> same as currently, but not necessarily debian
> - Yay free software
> - Yay easiest to maintain by uccans. It should also be easy to maintain by
> CS students
> - Yay reliable (I know unisfa doesn't think so, but I'll explain that
> later).
> - Ubuntu and linuxmint can actually run itunes and netflix (I'm intigued -
> netflix hasn't been released in australia yet anyway)
> - Will still play all the media and whatnot that you want it to (don't
> judge everything by Debian)
> - Debian sucks as a desktop OS because it tries to be too open source.
> This is why things like firefox were a bitch to install - debian has its
> own, fully open variant called iceweasel. It's also a pain with codecs for
> movies and music. Linux mint would be a better option.
>
> =========================================================================
> Reliability:
> Deepthought has some of the best uptimes of ANY COMPUTER MANAGED BY UCC.
> Most of the problems on deepthought have been external hardware issues
> unrelated to the operating system, or plain old malicious users (when I
> got to it the other day somebody had deliberately removed and purged both
> X and gdm).
>
> What putting windows on deepthought *won't* solve:
> - It won't stop stupid users who break things deliberately or out of
> ignorance
> - It won't help when you have yanked the disk drive out of an old machine
> and put it in a new machine with completely different hardware and bios
> settings
> - It won't help the barcode reader work when it hasn't been plugged in at
> all
> - It won't help the barcode reader work when it has been plugged into the
> mouse port
> - It won't help the network work after the network cable got left across
> the doorway and got shredded
> - It won't help it if the power is not plugged in
>
> All of the above things are the "issues" I've dealt with on deepthought in
> my time maintaining it, which is why I'm a little peeved that the finger
> seems to be being pointed at me and the software it is running.
>
> ==========================================================================
> Hardware:
> Until the most recent iteration of deepthought it was run on ucc donated
> hardware. Both the current and the last box were capable of playing
> whatever movies you want (even with the existing OS) - you pretty much
> need a $35 graphics card with the right outputs for what you want. I think
> I mentioned this on the facebook group several months ago when it was
> being discussed there and it got ignored.
>
> ==========================================================================
>
> Hope that helps you make a decision.
>
>
> Andrew Adamson
> bob at ucc.asn.au
>
> |"If you can't beat them, join them, and then beat them."                |
> | ---Peter's Laws                                                        |
> _______________________________________________
> UniSFA-Committee mailing list
> UniSFA-Committee at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au
> http://lists.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/unisfa-committee
>
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