file and print server for xp clients

[fourthofjuly]

hello!
so glad i discovered ebox for my fav distro ubuntu...

i work for a private school... we have 3 computer labs each with 30 machines on 3 independent peer-to-peer lan. all the machines are exactly identical running win xp professional.

our lab teachers are facing severe problems with:
1) viruses
2) students deleting others' files
3) teacher and student files scattered all over, very often making it difficult to locate them

we therefore plan to have 1 server machine for each of our labs, where user data can be centrally stored in their private directories. we want a very simple file and print server.

i downloaded ebox ubuntu server and installed the ubuntu-desktop on my office computer and succeeded in testing it with my other office computer for file and printer sharing. never imagined i could ever make windows talk to linux, so easy and quick...!!!

before we setup a production server, we would like to know if there is any way we can force our users to save files to their private directory on the server instead of saving the files locally on the client machine (xp)?

also, is there any economical way to overcome the virus problems that we are facing? we are giving broadband internet connection to the server...

any help will be appreciated...

thank you...

[javi]

Hi,

before we setup a production server, we would like to know if there is any way we can force our users to save files to their private directory on the server instead of saving the files locally on the client machine (xp)?

You could try to use roaming profiles. That means that your users will have their home directory on the eBox machine running in PDC mode. But that won't be enough, you will probably have to tweak your XP clients to restrict access to some local directories.

On the virus issue, I would recommend you run an antivirus on the samba shares in eBox. We don't support that feature from the web interface yet, but it's pretty straightforward to enable. We can help you with that.

Thanks!

[fourthofjuly]

thanks a lot for the prompt response...

which antivirus application do you suggest? & will it work for our windows viruses?

one more question... what is an ideal configuration for the server machine for 30 xp clients? and what will it be for 60 clients?

applications run in the labs include ms office (mostly, including powerpoint), c & c++, visual basic & oracle rdbms...

please accept my apologies if my questions are beyond the scope of this forum...

[jcanfield]

before we setup a production server, we would like to know if there is any way we can force our users to save files to their private directory on the server instead of saving the files locally on the client machine (xp)?

also, is there any economical way to overcome the virus problems that we are facing? we are giving broadband internet connection to the server...

Hi,

I would not recommend roaming profiles on XP, rather use boot scripts like kixtart to rewrite default paths to "My Documents." on boot. I have been doing extensive work recently setting up environments like this.

For an educational environment I would also recommend an good workstation imaging solution such as fogproject.org.  Once you have your file and print sharing issues resolved and on a centralized server, it becomes trivial to re-image a machine.  I know educational environments...kids happen to be anti-anti-viruses.   If it were me, I'd schedule a master image to deploy to all the workstations every night.

-Jim

[fourthofjuly]

Hi,

I would not recommend roaming profiles on XP, rather use boot scripts like kixtart to rewrite default paths to "My Documents." on boot. I have been doing extensive work recently setting up environments like this.

For an educational environment I would also recommend an good workstation imaging solution such as fogproject.org.  Once you have your file and print sharing issues resolved and on a centralized server, it becomes trivial to re-image a machine.  I know educational environments...kids happen to be anti-anti-viruses. Smiley  If it were me, I'd schedule a master image to deploy to all the workstations every night.

-Jim

thanks,

but we are not much into programming / scripting and would rather keep thing very very simple (therefore ubuntu and ebox!)...

fogproject seems to be very interesting... could you please elaborate on how we can use it? please do share your experience...

i was going through a samba setup guide, where it suggested that i could make the xp clients logon to the samba server domain with a username and password so that they can save files to the server, instead of making them login to the local machine and save files on the client...

your help is much appreciated...

[matija]

I have eboxes running in similar eviroments (though not schools).
Roaming profiles are OK for this. You need to reinstall the workstations. Then follow http://www.pcc-services.com/articles/implement_sys_policies.html to setup policies. Be restrictive.

I prefere Kasperski.