[tech] My notes today.

[Melissa Star]

Hi everyone,

These are the notes I took into today's meeting for what to discuss, amended in light of what we spoke about.

My purpose here was to gauge committee interest before taking further time to further research something that would not be likely to be supported.


1. A New Linux Server to be administereded by students.

Following on from the idea of having a set of "development" or "sandbox" machines that are not as strictly controlled for root access.

* Students able to learn to administer Linux on real hardware without having to be wheel members

* Potential mail server for "illuminati.org.au" and other domains we may get.

* Potential Docker host. I can talk more about Docker and what it is if anyone doesn't know (or google Docker, they have a great website).

I estimate a suitable server for this purpose could be purchased second hand in the $500 range, or a more powerful and ideal solution for about $1000.


2. A Microsoft Terminal Services and Exchange Server

The benefits of such a machine would be:

* Be able to learn Windows Server, Microsoft Exchange, Active Directory and Terminal Services administration.

* Offering Windows desktops and Microsoft Office for people who are logged on to Linux machines (repeated request by various people in the club, including while I was writing this e-mail!)

* Offering an emergency Windows remote desktop to anyone whose laptop starts misbehaving in class, or for people who can't afford a machine powerful enough to do what they would otherwise want to.

Hopefully either the uni or Microsoft would be able to license the relevant software to us (if we have in principle approval I'm willing to do the work).


To work for many concurrent users this would require quite a lot of RAM and multiple fast CPU cores, but there is a very big ask for the ability to run Windows apps over the top of non-Windows machines, including making it easier for people to use Linux on their laptops at uni and still access e.g. Microsoft Word.



NOT DISCUSSED BECAUSE WE REAN OUT OF TIME.


4. Upgrade of Gothenburg and installation of Application Programs

* Upgrade to Mojave may or may not be possible with purchase of a cheap GT710 graphics card. If not then ugprading as far as High Sierra will give us a large additional set of standard Mac applications.

To test the viability of doing this, I have purchased a functionally identical Mac Pro 3,1 for myself (which I then need for another project, unrelated to UCC) which will allow me to pre-test the concept, I will receive it next week and report on the outcome.

I'm quite interested in trying this out both because of the ability to easily do a multi-user Mac environment off any club or other machine (similar to the Terminal Server discussed above) and for the technical challenge in of itself.



Regards,

Melissa