[tech] [unisfa-committee] Deep Thought
Frames
oxinabox at ucc.asn.au
Tue Jul 30 08:53:01 WST 2013
Two part way options:
Option 1.7
-Standard UCC SOE(ish) with Winadmin adminstarators + a UnisfaAdmin Account,
Option 1.9:
- Standard UCC SOE with WinAdmin Adminstrators,
and we put Alice on winadmin.
I would be fairly Ok with putting Alice on winadmin,
she has clue.
However her UCC membership has lapsed.
Other downsides with this is that Unifa (/Committee) might not always
have members with the clue for UCC to give them winadmin.
There are at least a few Unifsans who are on winadmin, myself, JVB for a
start.
Also I would suggest that any Unisfa Admin account is not used by the
librarian,
as they wouldn't need admin for there duties AFAIK.
Frames
Wheel Member
who speaks only for self
---
Alice McCullagh wrote:
> Option 2 is good too though! Cooperation for the win!
>
> On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 10:37 PM, Alice McCullagh
> <alice.mccullagh at gmail.com <mailto:alice.mccullagh at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> 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 <mailto: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 <mailto:bob at ucc.asn.au>
>
> |"If you can't beat them, join them, and then beat them."
> |
> | ---Peter's Laws |
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